
Glass 

Book.. 

Gopyrig!itN°_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSITi 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
(In collaboration with Halford E. Luccock) 



THE MID-WEEK SERVICE 

16mo. Net, 35 Cents. 



A Working Program 
for the Local Church 



BY 

WARREN F. COOK 

ft 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI 






Copyright, 1917, by 
WARREN F. COOK 



NOV 14 1917 



^ 



0CI.A477554 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

7 



I. Foreword 

II. The Place of a Church Program 

III. Efficiency and the Church . . 

(How Far Can the Modern Efficiency Test be 
Applied ?) 

IV. Organization and Records . . . 
V. The Program of Maintenance . 

a. Membership. b. Finances. 

VI. The Program of Teaching . . . 

VII. The Program of Training . . . 

VIII. The Program of Pastoral Care . 

IX. The Program of Public Worship 

X. The Program of Preaching . . 

XI. The Program of Service . . . 

XII. A Modern Church Plant . . . 

(The Building Where the Program Must 
Develop) 



9 
13 

20 

48 

73 
112 
141 
160 
176 
195 
210 



CHAPTER I 
FOREWORD 

It has been a practice in the ministry of 
the author to bring before his official boards, 
at certain intervals, addresses or papers in 
which certain vital and practical matters of 
church life were discussed. These papers have 
come twice a year, in the form of the minis- 
ter's annual and semiannual addresses, or, at 
times, a series of matters have been taken up 
one after the other at successive monthly 
official board meetings. The present volume 
is made up from these addresses. Some of 
them are about as given; some are expanded 
and made more general with matters of purely 
local interest eliminated. A part of two of 
the chapters, "The Program of Teaching" and 
"The Program of Training," is the substance 
of two articles which have appeared in the 
Sunday School Journal, and indebtedness to 
the publishers of that periodical for their use 
here is acknowledged. 

Of course the series, while called a church 
program, is not exhaustive nor complete. The 
papers are put in this form rather than in the 
form of an abstract program because it is felt 

7 



8 A WORKING PROGRAM 

that in this way the suggestions, if any, will 
be more flexible than they otherwise would be. 
There is no thought of suggesting a ready-made 
program or plan which may be applied to 
a local situation with a little alteration to 
meet the particular need. If anyone is seeking 
such material, it will not be found here. This 
is not an attempt to write an answer book 
for the problems of church life which the 
minister can keep in his desk for consultation, 
as our teacher used to do when we were taking 
Ray's Higher Arithmetic. Such a task would 
be as impossible as unprofitable. The aim is, 
rather, to consider principles and formulas 
that may be illustrated by certain plans which 
have proven helpful to us. These are used 
only as illustrations, however, to show the 
working of some principle of church life, and 
are offered, as are all the suggestions herein, 
in the hope that they may be helpful to others, 
as so many others have been helpful to us. 

The chapter on "The Program of Pastoral 
Care" is not an attempt at homiletics, neither 
is the chapter on "The Program of Preaching." 
The chapters on "The Program of Teaching" 
and "The Program of Training," and indeed 
all the chapters, are written from the view 
point of the practical minister rather than of 
the specialist. 



CHAPTER II 
THE PLACE OF A CHURCH PROGRAM 

At the very outset it will be well to make 
clear the place a program must occupy in the 
life of the church. Our conviction is that a 
program is essential to the highest develop- 
ment and the best results of church life, but 
we would keep clearly in mind the fact that 
the program is not in any sense the life of the 
church, that it is not the end to which we 
labor, and that if too much attention is paid 
to it the real issues of church life will be 
defeated. 

The program is the skeleton in the body 
of the church. The flesh and blood and spirit 
are of first importance. As the bone gives 
form and character to the body, that upon it 
we may build an organization called life, so 
a program in the church is the framework about 
which all thought and activity is organized, 
directed, and given character. The program is 
not the life itself. It is the servant of the life. 
It is nothing in itself, but is the basis of every- 
thing, in its place. Some people have made 
mistake here, and, like the old tinker who 
became so interested in the works of his clock 

9 



10 A WORKING PROGRAM 

that he forgot its hands and face, and even 
that it was made to keep time, they have spent 
all their effort in formulating plans and pro- 
grams, which were fine specimens for a church 
museum perhaps, but of little use among living 
men. We have laws and regulations in society, 
without which the institution of civilization 
could not stand. Sometimes an official, like 
some traffic policeman, will make these regula- 
tions so prominent they become a hindrance 
and a positive detriment to the life they are 
made to serve. It is not the fault of the regu- 
lations. It is the fault of emphasis. Such we 
see at times in the church until the program 
which should be hid beneath the life, like the 
branches beneath the foliage and fruit, becomes 
the barren, cold tree of the winter season. 

The lowest form of life we know is the 
amceba. It is simply an irregular cell of proto- 
plasm, pushed here and there by the forces 
about it, feeding upon whatever comes its 
way, having simply the instinct to exist. Its 
life has no organization, no direction, no pur- 
pose. In a similar way a church without a 
well-defined program will move with the cur- 
rents about it, feed without choice upon 
whatever presents itself, having an instinct to 
exist. 

If this meaning and use be kept strictly in 



PLACE OF A CHURCH PROGRAM 11 

mind, then the program becomes one of the 
vital essentials of the church, without which 
the life of the institution becomes flabby and 
ill-shapen, without form and void. 

It may be well to say also here that in 
considering a working program there is no 
intention to map out a book full of details 
for finance committees, Ladies' Aids, young 
people's societies, etc. Recently we looked 
eagerly into a book called a modern church 
program, to find that page after page was just 
the detailed plans for one campaign after 
another of church activity. Our conviction 
is that church life is not a series of campaigns, 
but, like all other life, is a steady growth and 
development. There need be campaigns at 
times no doubt — financial, evangelistic, and 
others — but certainly we should labor toward 
a more regular and natural continuance of 
church life and expression. 

The thing we try to consider here is some- 
thing more fundamental than detailed plans. 
Rather than a system of exercise to get up a 
sweat and set the blood tingling, we want 
to consider the deeper processes of respiration, 
circulation, and nutrition. A special system of 
exercises with cold baths and tonic becomes 
necessary to a sluggish body — but far better 
is a normal life with the vital organs doing 



12 A WORKING PROGRAM 

their work naturally and well. So, while 
illustrations of certain plans will be used in 
the following pages, we say again that they 
are to be considered only as illustrations. 
They are not set forth in the hope that they 
will be adopted, or with any prophecy that 
they would work should they be adopted. They 
but illustrate principles of the more vital 
processes which should control the organized 
life of the church, principles upon which others 
can work out their own details according to 
the peculiar conditions of their local field. 

Dr. Jefferson, in his book "The Building of 
the Church" makes the assertion that a program 
is essential to the success of any minister as 
well as to the church. Without such a pro- 
gram the minister and the church which he 
leads will become swamped in a maze of prob- 
lems and details and, like the man lost upon 
the prairie at night, move in circles which 
arrive at no goal or destiny. It is for this 
guiding and directing purpose that we suggest 
a program for the local church. 



CHAPTER III 
EFFICIENCY AND THE CHURCH 

How Far Can the Modern Efficiency 
Test be Applied? 

It will be readily seen that the larger ques- 
tion of the application of the efficiency test 
to modern church life cannot be treated in 
a single chapter. Able men have taken vol- 
umes in which to cover this important matter. 
There is but one question that we want to 
raise here, a question that every man faces 
as he proceeds with church organization. The 
question is this: How far can the modern effi- 
ciency test be applied to church life? Can it 
be applied to all church work; has it any place 
at all in church life; or has it place in some 
activities such as finance and other business, 
while not in those matters of a more spiritual 
nature such as prayer and worship? Can it 
be used in a voluntary organization as in one 
where a pay roll is an incentive to best 
endeavor? 

These questions we want to consider. Take 
the last first. "You men ought to run your 
churches as a business," said a prominent 
business man to a group of ministers. "There 

13 



14 A WORKING PROGRAM 

is too much waste in time and effort and dupli- 
cation in the church." Now, we readily grant 
that there are time and energy wasted, as he 
and many others contend. But we might as 
well content ourselves first as last with the 
knowledge that you can't run a church as 
you do a business. One reason why you cannot 
is because you are dealing with voluntary 
workers. Your pay roll is persuasion, not 
bank notes, and as much as we deplore the fact, 
nevertheless human nature, by the very ne- 
cessity of existence in many instances, is 
challenged to best thought and energy by the 
wages received. When voluntary service has 
vision and spirit, it is far superior to paid 
service. This is illustrated in Belgium and 
other war-stricken countries, where volunteers, 
many of them Americans, are giving the best 
of life, even life itself, in volunteer service. 
And any man who has been long in church 
service has experienced some fine examples of 
noble Christian lives giving more willingly and 
even more efficiently in service to the church 
than to their daily work. The fact remains, 
however — and we are sure it would have been 
well for us if we had understood this earlier in 
our ministry — that the majority of church 
workers keep in the near margin of their con- 
sciousness the fact that they are free-will 



EFFICIENCY AND THE CHURCH 15 

agents who can come and go as they choose 
and stop or start as they feel like it. We have 
a notion that by better training in our churches, 
especially in our church Sunday school — by 
less petting in the case of spoiled and touchy 
natures, with a little more strictness in which 
the cause is uppermost rather than the feelings 
of some people — we will get better results; but, 
even so, we never can run a church as a business. 
We don't want to. We can lead a church and 
get far better results than to attempt to run it. 
This, however, does not imply that there is 
no place in the church for efficiency methods. 
When we go into one of our modern factories 
or department stores we find that each depart- 
ment has its specific tasks to perform, and 
that there is no conflict either in the work 
that is done or in the time and place of doing 
the work. The thing runs like a clock. There 
are many wheels, but they run in harmony. 
We find, if we inquire, that they have applied 
one of the big words of the age, this word 
"efficiency." This word has been written so 
large and spoken so loud and applied so uni- 
versally that it has been accepted by some as 
a panacea for all the ills of the day. We test 
our machinery, we standardize our business and 
our schools, we raise our potatoes and our 
babies by efficiency. Of course the word has 



16 A WORKING PROGRAM 

hit the churches, and some of them have been 
badly hit. But there are some things in this 
world which the modern test of efficiency can- 
not test, and they are not all in the church. 
There are values which it can never measure. 
Can efficiency measure the actual business 
power and the accompanying business success 
of the personal spirit of good will between 
employer and employed? Can efficiency test 
the actual development of the child mind under 
the influence of a given mental stimulus from 
the teacher? Can efficiency measure the power 
of courtesy? Can it follow the influence of 
will upon will, of soul upon soul? Manifestly 
no. When the newspaper totals the expense 
of one of Billy Sunday's campaigns and then 
divides into that the number of reported con- 
versions, with the result of so much cost per 
soul, it is as much nonsense as to expect a 
minister to make a microscopic study of the 
souls of the children of his Sunday school and 
report the number converted during the year. 
The main difference is that the newspaper 
rather intends its report to be taken as non- 
sense. You cannot count the presence of souls 
as you can the noses at an Epworth League 
or Christian Endeavor group meeting and then 
award a banner. You cannot pay for souls 
by piece: you cannot apply the time clock to 



EFFICIENCY AND THE CHURCH 17 

the working of the leaven. There is a realm of 
the intellectual, of the moral, and of the spiritual 
that cannot be unlocked by the efficiency key. 

But beeause there is a realm, especially in the 
work of the church, which cannot be tested by 
business efficiency, many voices are raised 
against it altogether, and say, "You have no 
place among us. There is no phase of our 
work where your measure can be used." Cer- 
tainly, this attitude is as wrong as to try to 
apply practical efficiency tests to spiritual 
values. The schools have not done this. They 
have thrown wide their doors and said to 
efficiency, "Work where you can." Business, 
of course, has taken the same attitude, even 
more freely than the schools, and so have many 
religious organizations, such as charitable so- 
cieties and the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. 
But here the church has been very backward. 
It has too often followed a sort of a do-as- 
you-please-and-trust-to-Providence plan. Even 
though certain phases of church work (and 
the most important phases) are closed to the 
modern efficiency test, at the same time it 
would be exceedingly interesting, and no doubt 
profitable, to test the work of the average 
church and the average minister by the time 
clock and the piecework system. Probably no 
record would be so interesting as one's own. 



18 A WORKING PROGRAM 

Certainly, the business methods of many 
churches — their methods of raising money, their 
system of keeping records, their disbursement 
of funds, their use of the church plant, their 
form of organization, their general program 
of work — are exceedingly unbusinesslike to say 
the least. And we find that churches with 
fine business men on their boards who apply 
the most modern business methods in their 
own work often do not bring them into use in 
the church. This has been a source of wonder, 
but the reason is probably because men pay 
more attention to tradition in the church than 
they do in business. But is it not reasonable 
that we should use every legitimate principle of 
efficiency which can be used in a religious 
organization, applying it wherever it has appli- 
cation and just so far as it can measure, then 
have the sense and the patience to wait for the 
development of those slower processes of na- 
ture, just as we have learned to have patience 
with the tender plant and young mind in its 
gradual unhurried process of unfolding ? 

We must apply both impatience and patience 
in church work with wisdom to know where 
each will effect the best results. Realizing 
that the work of building the kingdom of God 
cannot all be done this year, nor in our life, 
we should lay with permanence the part given 



EFFICIENCY AND THE CHURCH 19 

us to build. Some people are never satisfied 
unless they are working on the top story. 
They are interested in the finishing end of 
every job. They long to harvest the fruit. 
It may be that we are called, however, to build 
well a foundation or plant the seed that we shall 
never see push above the ground. If such be 
the case, we can be sure that if we do it well, 
we will have done our duty, and our reward is 
as certain as though we were heralded the 
world round as one who brings to completion 
a great task. There is comfort in this to the 
man who is doing his utmost. There is danger 
to the man who would use such a principle to 
hide shirking inefficient efforts. 

Throughout the following pages then we shall 
keep in mind that there are realms of church 
life which cannot be measured by the modern 
business efficiency test, yet much of church 
activity that can and therefore should be so 
tested. 



CHAPTER IV 
ORGANIZATION AND RECORDS 

It is not our purpose to take up here the 
question of the details of the various organiza- 
tions in the local church, which would be quite 
an impossible and quite as useless a task. 
Organizations do not necessarily mean organ- 
ization. Sometimes they make organization 
impossible. By the program of organization 
we mean a general plan which underlies the 
organized life of the church. Life is an organ- 
ized plan. The circulatory, respiratory, and 
nutritive systems are a part of that plan. 
They are complete in themselves, but they do 
not work at cross purposes with each other. 
Such is our idea in having a fundamental 
plan of organization in the local church, a plan 
through which all the separate organizations 
of the church live and move and find their 
life and purpose. We well know that such is 
not always the case. A bit of experience will 
illustrate. 

Two young men entered the morning preach- 
ing service late. They had both been at the 
Sunday school session preceding, but had lin- 
gered for fifteen minutes at the close of the 

20 



ORGANIZATION AND RECORDS 21 

session in one of the classrooms, where they 
were engaged in a very serious and somewhat 
heated conversation. 

"So it's true we have lost Phillips." 
"Yes, it's true. And it's a bloomin' shame. 
We not only have lost Phillips but we will 
lose most of his boys. It's a shame — that's 
all — something has got to be done." 

The facts back of this conversation were 
simply these: Phillips was at the head of a 
boys' department in the Sunday school. This 
boys' department had been planning for an 
entertainment to be given in the church on a 
certain date. When the tickets came out for 
the affair, they found that one of the other 
societies of the church had planned a special 
business meeting for that night, and that the 
Ladies' Aid Society was giving a chicken-pie 
supper just two nights before. The boys' 
entertainment went through, but it was a 
dismal failure. The chicken-pie supper had 
taken all the cash the people had to spend 
that week, and the extra business meeting took 
from the boys' entertainment others who might 
have come. Some people were sorry; others 
accepted it as a matter of course. Phillips 
took it to heart, and without any to-do about 
it he simply wound up his work in that church 
and went to another. Similar things had hap- 



22 A WORKING PROGRAM 

pened too often, and there seemed to be no 
remedy. Now, the results were not simply 
that Phillips left, but, as predicted, some of 
the very finest young men of that department 
of the Sunday school left also, and some of 
those boys simply went out of that church 
into the world and have never as yet come 
back to any church. All because two societies, 
both trying to do good things, happened to 
conflict in the time of their activities. 

Let us give another illustration. This time 
it was two women's societies. One of them 
was having the only affair which they were 
to give during the year. When they were 
making their final preparations for the affair 
they found that another women's society of 
the church had planned something just the 
night before and, because neither would give 
way, friction was started which hurt that 
church for years to come. 

Now, these two cases may be extreme, and 
yet we doubt not that the church of any size 
is an exception which has not felt the conflict 
of its various organizations, either in the work 
they were undertaking or in the time of its 
execution, unless there had been established 
some efficient coordinating agency in the 
church. 

Some one says, "The trouble with our church 



ORGANIZATION AND RECORDS 23 

is that it is overorganized." But as a matter 
of fact that is not the trouble. The trouble 
is that it is not organized at all. Yet that 
person was right in what he intended to express. 
He simply meant that in his church there were 
so many organizations, and they were so un- 
related, and therefore so conflicting, that a very 
large share of the effort and energy of the work- 
ing force of the church went to waste and 
friction — probably more friction than anything 
else. Such a thing can be duplicated over and 
over again. Where is the efficient force to 
unify and direct the increasing number of 
authorized organizations in the local church? 
In many cases, instead of the organizations in 
the local church marching in step and file under 
one common authority, each waits till it gets 
an inspiration, and then, as Bishop McConnell 
says of the Mexican soldier, "just blazes away." 
The result is that instead of hitting the enemy, 
one organization is more likely to hit some 
other organization in the solar plexus and deal 
its efforts a deathblow or start a fratricidal war. 
Undoubtedly, one of the great needs of a 
local church of any size is some agency which 
shall unify the efforts, direct the campaign, 
and train the guns upon one common enemy 
rather than upon its own troops. 

Especially is there need of some such body 



24 A WORKING PROGRAM 

in the local Methodist church, if a program 
covering several years is to be drawn and car- 
ried on, because of the possibility of changing 
ministers who may each have a program of 
his own. A church with a program can go 
forward steadily instead of readjusting itself 
every few years to the plans of a new minister. 
It can select its ministry with this in view. 

1. Now, what shall this central organization 
or authority be? We have to take account 
of existing organizations and their authority, 
but if there is to be efficiency, this body must 
represent all the organizations and societies in 
the church. If there is to be authority, it must 
be delegated authority, not imposed. If there 
is to be leadership, the people must feel that 
they are responsible for the leadership, then 
they will be responsive to it. One naturally 
turns for such authority in the Methodist 
Church to the official board. And while the 
official board has power (and should exercise 
it) of passing on all general church activities, 
it has limitations, as I shall try to show. 

a. It is too large to call together for things 
that need immediate action. 

b. It is not familiar as a whole with the de- 
tails of much of the work of the church, such 
as the Sunday school, the young people's work, 
the women's work. 



ORGANIZATION AND RECORDS 25 

c. The Discipline guards certain other boards 
in the local church, such as the Sunday School 
Board, and gives them certain powers which 
this board cannot violate. 

d. And, further, there are so many varied 
organizations in a church of any size that 
there is need of a representative "Central 
Board" to act as a clearing house for the whole. 

For convenience let us call this "Central 
Board" the Church Cabinet, or Council. Such 
a Cabinet should have upon it a representative 
from each separate organization in the church; 
that is, it should be composed of the repre- 
sentatives from the trustees (and the official 
board other than the trustees), the Sunday 
school, the men's organization, the women's 
organization, etc. This Cabinet will meet and 
receive the program of activities of each of 
the several organizations, and from these com- 
pile one general program of activity for the 
whole church (which it is well to publish for 
the general information of the church member- 
ship), or it would be still better if this Cabinet 
would draw and suggest to all the organizations 
represented a comprehensive program of which 
all would have a part. 

This would, as will be seen at once, eliminate 
much overlapping of activities. It would 
create understanding and sympathy on the 



9S A WORKING PROGRAM 

part of one organization for another. It would 
give each organization a better perspective of 
its own work amidst the whole. It would also 
make each organization look farther ahead, 
and thus plan its work better, so that we need 
not have organizations saying, "Go to now, 
it's time to have something," and then go off 
half prepared. It would tend to give care and 
dignity to the character of the program of 
activities of each separate organization; it 
would also create the ideal that each organiza- 
tion was an integral part of the whole, working 
in cooperation with each other organization 
instead of being a separate entity; it would 
give encouragement and education to weaker 
organizations and generally unify the efforts 
of the whole church. 

At first it might seem that such a Church 
Cabinet would be as unwieldy as an official 
board, but it would not be, first, because it 
would be much more representative and dem- 
ocratic, and each organization would come to 
feel the necessity of being represented in its 
meetings, and then after the first few meetings 
of this Cabinet as a whole, in which the general 
program was drawn, there could be elected 
from its members a smaller Cabinet or com- 
mittee of say five, to which would be given 
power to steer the general program and attend 



ORGANIZATION AND RECORDS 27 

to minor details that would arise. The whole 
Cabinet could then meet about once a quarter 
to review and advise the work of this smaller 
group. 

Further, however, if the organizations of a 
church are properly coordinated, this Cabinet 
would not be so large as would be the case in 
the average church, where there are often two 
or more organizations undertaking to do the 
work that one could do better. For example, 
many churches have three or more women's 
societies. There is no doubt that one woman's 
society with three departments covering the 
three organizations would be in the end much 
more effective in the general work of the 
church. It would create understanding and 
sympathy between the organizations which 
often does not exist at present. It would also 
facilitate an approach to new women coming 
into the church in a united way as cannot be 
done now, and it would cut down a number 
of meetings a month so that the women could 
be released for other important work. This 
same thing could be said with reference to the 
Brotherhood and organized men's classes, and 
it applies as well to groups of young women 
like some Philathea classes, who often carry on 
a very effective missionary program, working 
side by side with such young ladies' missionary 



28 A WORKING PROGRAM 

organizations as the Queen Esther Circle and 
the King's Daughters. One thing that makes 
it very difficult to coordinate this work, and 
also that of the women's societies, referred to 
above, is the independent regulations of the 
general women's societies — the Foreign and the 
Home Missionary Societies. It would seem that 
these societies would do a great service to the 
church if they were to make arrangements for 
such possibilities of coordination. It might 
for a time — possibly a year or two — decrease 
the offerings from one or the other, or both 
of the local societies, but it would undoubtedly 
create an understanding and a sympathy 
among local church women that would be 
highly desirable, and in the long run be greatly 
beneficial to the cause of missions. Now, very 
often there is rivalry between these societies 
that is manifestly against the very underlying 
spirit of missions. 

This same thing is true of our young peo- 
ple. There is great waste of time and en- 
ergy, as well as confusion, among local young 
people because of the demands of two or more 
general boards, such as the Sunday School and 
the Epworth League Boards, offering programs 
that have no relation to each other. More 
will be said as to this in the chapters on "The 
Program of Teaching" and "The Program of 



ORGANIZATION AND RECORDS 29 

Training," but just here let us say that it 
seems only reasonable that one general organ- 
ization with departments of activity related in 
one common program would give our young 
people far superior training than the present 
plan. There are churches that have felt this 
need so urgently they have worked out 
for themselves some such plan and would not 
think of going back to the old complicated, 
unrelated system. The well-organized Sunday 
school can do all that an Epworth League and 
a Junior League can do, and much more, 
without duplicating workers and work. This is 
true also of children's and young people's 
missionary organizations. Better missionary in- 
struction and training can be done under the 
authority of the Sunday school than in separate 
organizations; and if our parent boards would 
only see this and cooperate instead of insisting 
upon setting up separate organizations (often 
without consulting the minister or other local 
authority, except the local missionary organ- 
ization), much more would be accomplished in 
the end than under the present plan. Of course 
this cannot all be done at the usual Sunday 
school hour, but all these other organizations 
take extra hours and workers who could be 
used as well or better under Sunday school 
authority than separately. 



30 A WORKING PROGRAM 

At first any such change in the local church 
is bound to be confusing, the more so among 
voluntary workers who have been brought up 
under the old system. This coordination, how- 
ever, in my mind, is the thing to which the 
general church is tending, and which is necessary 
to the future of the life of the local church. 
It is its plain duty to get its own organizations 
and to conduct its own work upon the most 
efficient scientific basis, so that it can direct 
that power in the uplift of the community and 
the world, rather than to spend the major 
portion of its energies upon its own exist- 
ence. 

It would seem, then, that if there is to be 
unification of local church effort instead of 
spasmodic outbursts by unrelated organizations 
often running counter to each other, attempt- 
ing similar teaching and activity, and because 
of this, omitting much needed work, to say 
nothing of the division of spirit, some such 
central authority as suggested is imperative. 

2. Another factor in the program of organ- 
ization is the matter of records which centers 
around a church office. If a church is small, this 
office will doubtless be the minister's study. In 
a church of size, especially if a downtown church, 
a well-equipped office will be found not only 
desirable but a necessity. Many churches in 



ORGANIZATION AND RECORDS 31 

the heart of the city keep their doors open 
daily for rest, meditation, and prayer. Some 
of them hold noonday services, some even 
midnight services, in their endeavor to meet 
the needs of the people. The church is begin- 
ning to realize that its plant is an investment 
and should be used a great deal more than 
just on Sundays and a few hours during the 
week. The social economist criticizes men of 
wealth for having several houses none of which 
are in use but a fraction of the time. Base- 
ball corporations are criticized for holding large 
tracts of play land which are used only half 
the year, and in use only a part of the day 
during the playing season, especially when 
thousands of children are starving for room 
and light and air. Certainly, then, a church, 
which is the agent of all agents for humanity's 
welfare, should not subject itself to the crit- 
icism of maintaining a plant for the exclusive 
privileges of those who choose to worship but 
a few hours a week. One of the ironies that 
presents itself in many cities is a large, dark, 
cold church, with locked iron gates, bearing 
the sign over its doorway in golden letters 
"Welcome." Welcome is not a thing that can 
be dispensed by painted signs — or by words 
or handshakes. W T elcome must be demon- 
strated by the willing sacrifice of personalities 



32 A WORKING PROGRAM 

aglow in their passion for humanity. Many 
of our church plants represent thousands of 
dollars of investment — some hundreds of thou- 
sands. Some of these owe a great increase in 
property valuation to the community which has 
built around them rather than to their own 
efforts or foresight. This only increases their 
obligation to serve the community in which 
they live. The church that accepts, without 
responsibility, such treasure, has lost its right 
to the name. It has become a religious club — 
with none too much religion. On the other 
hand, a church which spreads its welcome with 
light and warmth in which are religious, phil- 
anthropic and social activities, will have written 
its welcome sign in the minds and hearts of 
men, and their glad response will be answer to 
its invitation. 

(1) Now, in any church, whether downtown 
or uptown, large or small, in a special office 
or the minister's study, one of the very first 
requisites is a complete and accurate set of 
church records. We need not stop to elaborate 
the fact that in this regard our ministers, 
and our laymen as well, have been exceedingly 
lax. The way that members have been allowed 
to slip out of the church and become lost is 
nothing short of shameful. Men have often 
been far more eager to add names to the rolls 



ORGANIZATION AND RECORDS 33 

than to check names off by seeing them placed 
in other churches to which they have gone. 
Our zeal for our own church list has far ex- 
ceeded our zeal for the preservation of the 
Kingdom and the hearts of men, for we know 
not, and never can know, how many of those 
that stray away are never regained to the 
church. This same neglect is more flagrant 
in the case of Sunday school and young people's 
societies. The rule of many Sunday schools 
has been to drop names casually from their 
membership, when members failed to show up 
in a given time, as one might discard a crumpled 
paper in the scrap basket. In truth, the care- 
lessness with which all records have been kept 
has entailed a loss we can never measure, not 
simply in members, but in the very spirit it 
has created in the mind of men as to church 
statistics. "Figures won't lie," says the adage, 
but sometimes they do nevertheless. There 
is a sense in which all statistics lie, but none have 
so bad a reputation as church statistics. It is 
time the church was waking up on this matter, 
and it is a sign of certain advance that she is. 

Of course men will have their ways of keep- 
ing records, ways which are best for them. 
We have found the following system helpful 
to us. The system is more or less simple and 
is offered only as an illustration of a way by 



34 A WORKING PROGRAM 

which a membership can be carefully handled. 
(I do not consider here pastors' personal records. 
Every man has his own.) 

The first record is the official church member- 
ship record, listed alphabetically in a book 
prepared by our church for that purpose. It 
keeps, not only members, but records of pas- 
tors, of official men, of preparatory members, 
of baptisms, marriages, etc. This record is a 
very familiar one, but not as intimate perhaps 
as it might be in some cases. I know of a case 
in a church of nearly a thousand members 
where the official record lay in one member's 
house for five years. 

Besides this official record, which it would 
be well to preserve in a church safe, we use 
several card index lists. One is an alphabetical 
constituency list which covers all in any way 
connected with the church. This list is numeri- 
cally about three times the size of the member- 
ship list. The form below will give an idea of 
the record kept in this list. 1 

A second card list is by streets. This is the 
church mailing list. 

On this card an entire family is listed and 
by check marks it can be seen at a glance to 
what organizations they belong, the day of 

x Church record cards issued under authority of the General 
Conference can be had of our Book Concern. 



ORGANIZATION AND RECORDS 35 



Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church 

Constituency List 



Name. 



Residence — ■ — 
Occupation ~— — 
Business Address , 



..feirth--.....— .„ 

-Phone — 



Phone 



Family Relation — — — 
Cnurch Relation ... 



Remarks; — - 



their birth, anniversaries, etc. It should be 
noted that the names appear in order — the 
husband first, the wife next, then young 
men, then young women, and finally children. 
This is convenient, since it makes available a 
mailing list for the men of the church, or the 



Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church 


ADDRESS , 


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Mem. Standard Brs. 
Mem. of League 
Mem.Scouts(Boys)«Slrls 
Mem. Junior Church 

Birthday 


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36 A WORKING PROGRAM 

women, or tne young men or young women, 
or for addressing the children separately. 
That is, if the men's organization wish to 
circularize the men, they but direct letters 
sent from the church office to all on the first 
lines of these cards. In case of the women, 
those on the second line, and so on. A stenog- 
rapher or secretary is essential, although with 
a small constituency classes and organizations 
can keep sets of envelopes addressed ahead for 
use when wanted. It will be found that a good 
duplicating machine and an addressograph will 
soon pay what they cost. 

Besides these two card lists we use Sunday 
school lists, as carefully handled as the church 
roll, and it is not our intention to let anyone 
slip away without knowing why, or without 
using every effort to bring him back or place 
him elsewhere. There are appended here 
several of the Sunday school record blanks 
which explain themselves. 

Following is the front of the card which gives 
the complete individual record of each child that 
comes into our school. Following that is the form 
which is on the back of this card where the record 
of the child as he passes from class to class and 
from department to department is kept, with the 
grades that he has made in his work, including 
class and department and general averages. 



ORGANIZATION AND RECORDS 37 



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A WORKING PROGRAM 



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ORGANIZATION AND RECORDS 39 



Certificate of JJtmtuiiUm 

This is to cert\f$*h<a 

is hereby promoted to.-. — , .grade 

oj the.**.* -...- — ~ department of 

afrimttj OTetfjobisl fljtjurefj gxljool 



STANDARD. 

Promotion wiU be based upon weekly records-, term tests, and 
yearly examinations showing the degree of faithfulness, in attendance, 
punctuality, lesson study. Church attendance, and general interest in 
class, department and school spirit. Pupils will not be able to be 
perfect in all of the above items, but a spirit of carelessness or 
indifference as to these essential things will be considered sufficient 
reason (or omitting promotion records which will deprive the pupil 
of graduation honors. We believe that the Church school can teach 
nothing more fundamental than habits of faithfulness and regularity 
in the performance of duty, and that the results of teaching the Sunday 
School lesson is largely dependent upon such habits. We, therefore, 
expect a spirit of interest and a habit of faithfulness upon the part of 
pupils, teachers, officers and all who are necessary to the life of the 
school 



The two forms above are our Certificate of 
Promotion and our Standard, which is the 
back of the promotion certificate. 2 



2 A full list of promotion certificates can be had at the 
Methodist Book Concern. 



40 



A WORKING PROGRAM 



2[nmttj UHetljatost Episcopal Glutei) 



IS>cfjoal 



NEW BRITAIN. CONN. 

Weekly Report 
to be filled in by every Teacher or Substitute 



Date 



1 Is your class AH Present ? . 



2 Did you attend to Last Sunday's Absentees?_ 



3 Today's Absentees 


Will you call, write or 
telephone to this scholar 
before next Sunday? 
Please ans. "Yes" or "No" 


















Today's New Scholars 


Addresses 







5 Please report all Changes of Address 



6 Birthday Offerings. 



7 Considering Church Membership 
Teacher. 



Class .No. 



Further information or suggestions may be written on the 
Back of this Report 



ORGANIZATION AND RECORDS 41 



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Class Name 




Teacher 




Date 




























































































































































































































Class Item Totals 






Total Class Points Class Percentage 























These are weekly record blanks to be filled 
by teachers and secretary. 



42 A WORKING PROGRAM 

These are for complete record of a child 
throughout its Sunday school life and for weekly 
record of teachers as well as pupils. They 
require constant attention by more than one 
person, but there will always be found those 
who like this type of work and excel at it — 
in fact, render better service here than any- 
where else. Here will sometimes be found a 
place for some poor teacher, hard to dismiss, 
but well adapted to this kind of work. 

Another record we have found essential to 
best management has been a card index record 
by organizations with alphabetical arrangement 
under each organization. This includes trustees 
and official board, Sunday School Board and 
officers of all organizations, listed separately, 
with addresses and phones so that they can be 
referred to without delay. 

Still another record of great value to us is 
a list of birthdays, anniversaries, etc. We 
send out from one to a dozen messages and 
greetings daily. We find that even the older 
people enjoy these simple remembrances, while 
the children show keen disappointment if for 
any reason they are not remembered. The 
matter is so systematized now, however, that 
it is not our fault if greetings are not received. 
Each day when the author goes to his desk 
these cards for the week are before him for his 



ORGANIZATION AND RECORDS 43 

signature, and are mailed a day or so before 
the anniversary. 

It is of great advantage, as we have noted 
before, if a church is open daily; and if it is, 
it is essential that those in charge have office 
hours. It is embarrassing and it is negligent to 
have people come to an open church for informa- 
tion and other purposes and find no one in. 
No doctor or business man can long maintain 
customers in such manner. The sexton, the 
minister's secretary, the assistant or director 
of religious education, or deaconess, as well as 
the minister, should have hours. If, for exam- 
ple, the sexton has stated hours from nine to 
eleven o'clock daily, excepting one day; the 
assistant from eleven to one, except one day 
(not the same day as the sexton); the minister 
from one to two daily, excepting one day; and 
the minister's secretary, hours following the 
minister's in the afternoon daily, it will add a 
business sense and efficiency as little else can. 
To put it bluntly, folks would begin to realize 
that the church is on the job. Besides the 
above arrangement the church phone can be 
the same number as that of the parsonage, or 
the assistant's home, so that the ministers can 
be reached at most hours, day and night, as 
should be, except during study hours, and 
even then in urgent cases. 



44 A WORKING PROGRAM 

(2) Another element necessary to the most 
efficient working of the church office, will be 
the handling from the office the various engage- 
ments of the church program. Before an organ- 
ization in the church sets a date for any 
affair it should consult with the church office, 
so that there will be no conflict. Under 
such a plan as we have outlined under the 
Central Board, or Cabinet, this would be 
largely taken care of in advance. Another 
essential, however, is the matter of giving the 
privilege for use of rooms in the church. This 
is often done by the president or a committee 
of the Board of Trustees. With an open church 
office and with a program of work, such as out- 
lined, the minister or his secretary has his 
mind on the activities as no one else has. That 
is his business. He is more accessible than 
anyone else, and when reached he is better able 
to pass upon requests than some one whose 
mind is upon other business interests. He, in 
an instant, relates all the church activities, 
and if he has judgment, is able to decide com- 
petently. Otherwise the program of the whole 
church may be interfered with. This is not 
to give the minister unlimited power. He is 
under a board of directors. He is simply a 
manager carrying out their orders. In matters 
extraordinary and unusual it would only be 



ORGANIZATION AND RECORDS 45 

the part of wisdom to consult with further 
authority, but when the people call in to the 
office for use of the church and the minister 
or secretary has to refer them to another party, 
who may be out of the city, and can give no 
final answer, it not only takes more of the 
time of the church office force, but leaves the 
mind of the consulting organization and the 
public in an uncertain attitude. 

(3) In a church office such as we have been 
considering there will be a fine opportunity of 
circularizing the church constituency. By 
means of a stenographer and a duplicating 
machine and an addressograph it is possible 
to turn into the homes of your constituency 
at least one message a week. One of the finest 
advertising methods is by means of the personal 
letter. There comes to the writer's desk al- 
most every week a letter from a business firm 
that is so personal in its nature that he is 
bound to give attention to it, and when he 
needs something in the line which this house 
represents he rather instinctively thinks of this 
business firm. If the church keeps its name 
and its interests before the minds of its people 
in a judicious way week by week, it will find 
its congregations increasing and an intelligent 
interest being aroused in all its work. One 
of the means which some churches have found 



46 A WORKING PROGRAM 

effective is a messenger system made up of 
groups of boys and girls of the Junior Depart- 
ment of the Sunday school. Stationery is 
printed that looks almost exactly like a Western 
Union blank, upon which messages are sent. 
These boys and girls come to the church on 
Saturday afternoons, and will take out any- 
where from twenty-five to one hundred letters 
each. Each child is provided with a little 
book like the one a messenger boy carries, 
in which he gets the signatures of those to 
whom the messages are delivered. A record 
is kept of the number of letters each child 
carries, and he is credited with having saved 
the church the amount that it would have 
cost in postage to mail these letters. Some boys 
and girls will save the church in this way as 
much as a dollar each per week. Besides this 
there are rewards given them after they have 
carried a certain number of pieces of mail. 
These rewards consist in badges bearing the 
name of the church, and after they have car- 
ried a sufficient amount a cap bearing the 
name of the church messenger service is given, 
and provision is made, whereby if a sufficient 
amount of service is contributed, a coat will be 
given to a boy or girl with the church name on 
the sleeve. This has a tendency to create an 
interest among the boys and girls as well as 



ORGANIZATION AND RECORDS 47 

being a splendid service to the church and an 
efficient advertisement in the community. 

Now, when we raise the question of the 
organization of the various societies in the local 
church, we enter upon a detail which could 
not be satisfactorily discussed in a few pages 
and which we believe is a matter for each church 
and each society to handle according to its own 
needs and conditions. The principles of modern 
efficiency, which have been suggested, for the 
elimination of waste in time and effort should 
be adhered to; in the Sunday school we have be- 
fore us the very finest system of graded organiza- 
tion illustrated in such a book as Athearn's "The 
Church School," and others. The women's or- 
ganizations, as well as the men's, are quite largely 
planned from the central office, and are often too 
rigid, as we have suggested. All organizations 
cannot be run into the same mold. The local 
church will be mindful that it is a connectional 
church, but it is also a local church — a commu- 
nity[church — and must serve its local field. With 
these two things in mind it can be loyal to the 
connection and still be flexible enough to serve 
its community if it has a mind and a passion to 
do it. We have been interested in this chapter to 
discuss the more general matters of organization, 
and turn now to the subject of maintenance. 



CHAPTER V 
THE PROGRAM OF MAINTENANCE 

It would be possible to discuss many phases 
of church activity under this head, for the 
church is maintained by many agencies. The 
Sunday services of worship, as well as the mid- 
week services and activities, and the various 
organizations, especially the Sunday school, 
contribute in one way or another so much to 
the general life of the church, that they could 
properly be discussed under any consideration 
of maintenance. In some churches the subject 
of maintenance could be well covered by dis- 
cussing the Ladies' Aid Society. For obvious 
reasons it seems better to treat these other 
phases of church life separately, and confine 
this chapter to two forms of church main- 
tenance, namely, financial maintenance and 
maintenance by means of membership upkeep. 

We shall speak of the upkeep of membership 
first, because financial maintenance is largely 
dependent upon it. 

1. Keeping Up the Church Membership. The 
task of keeping up the church membership, both 
in numbers and in quality, is all too often left 
exclusively with the minister. He looks up 

48 



PROGRAM OF MAINTENANCE 49 

the new people, cultivates the outsider, con- 
ducts the preparatory classes, and is generally 
responsible for this work. There are serious 
objections to this. Under such conditions the 
minister is deciding the personality of the 
church to such an extent that in a pastorate 
of a few years it is possible for him to very 
largely change the character and policy of a 
church. With the power which the minister 
has in the Methodist Church of putting men 
on the official board this possibility is enlarged 
rather than checked. We have known cases 
where, in a pastorate of but a few years, 
ministers, with an ambition to make a record, 
thinking more of numbers than of quality, and 
with a will to dictate, have been able to change 
the policy and program of the entire church. 
If the minister's ideals are high, and his mo- 
tives unselfish, and if his wisdom and judg- 
ment are good, this may bring temporary value 
— only temporary, however, as the class of 
people who will allow this will hardly maintain 
a high standard. If, on the other hand, the 
minister's conception of the church task is not 
as high as it should be, the results will be 
anything but good. We have observed a few 
cases where the standards in missionary ideal 
and activity were lowered, where the modern 
Sunday school idea and all its activities were 



50 A WORKING PROGRAM 

destroyed, and where the general high con- 
ception of church work and purpose was lost 
sight of either in advancing purely local in- 
terests, or in the selfish ambition of the minister 
for promotion. Oftentimes it takes years, after 
such conditions have been fostered, to build 
again the standards and activities that have 
been destroyed. 

Another danger which is a part of the above 
but not always accompanied by all its results, 
and therefore more subtle, is the simple idea 
that church membership can be built by in- 
crease of numbers. In the Methodist Church, 
where ministers are subject to annual possi- 
bilities of change (although there is no time 
limit, the influence of the Annual Conference 
upon the mind of the men is constantly felt), 
and where promotion is frequently based upon 
the man's reports, there is great temptation to 
increase the membership as much as possible 
without giving due care to the preparation of 
men's minds and hearts for the full meaning of 
membership. This may mean that children 
and adults are rushed into church membership 
without full conception of its high privilege and 
purpose, afterward to become a weight or even 
a drag, in the movement of the church life. 

The story is told of the minister who at 
Conference reported a great revival. When 



PROGRAM OF MAINTENANCE 51 

asked by the presiding bishop how many were 
added to the church membership he replied, 
"Not any, sir; we got rid of one hundred and 
fifty." This is not to indicate any thought of 
too easily scratching people off a church roll. 
Some men are as ambitious for cutting as for 
climbing. There are many people in church 
membership who are not much good to the 
church, nor to anyone else, but we know not 
how much better they are in the church than 
they might be out of it. 

There are two standards in church member- 
ship — one of entrance and one of attainment. 
The standard of attainment is limited only by 
the highest Christian character, but the stand- 
ard of entrance is based not upon character 
but upon motive, upon sincerity of purpose. 
In one respect the church is like the hospital. 
The hospital does not say that only the perfect 
in health can be admitted, but holds out its 
hands to the sick and wounded. After it has 
received them it exerts all its efforts to put 
them in perfect healthy condition. In like 
manner the church does not require a perfect 
moral or spiritual condition for entrance. It 
requires a sincere motive only, but after coming 
into its membership all its efforts are exerted to 
produce a perfect character. Jesus declared 
that he came not to save the righteous but the 



52 A WORKING PROGRAM 

sinner, and this principle of Jesus must never 
be overlooked. This fact is bound to bring 
into the church those who will be criticized by 
the less charitable, and those who do not 
understand the purpose of the church. 

All that has been said, however, in defense 
of the weaker member is not in defense of 
getting anyone into the church who may be 
persuaded to feel that at least he will be no 
worse in than out, and perhaps he may get 
some help to be better — not at all. Church 
membership should mean something very real 
in standards of living and thinking as well 
as the sacrifice in service and material support 
which one should voluntarily and willingly give. 
Certainly, this should influence the mind of 
a minister when he is endeavoring to build 
up the membership of the church. We would 
not attribute false ambitions to ministers gen- 
erally. We only say that there is a subtle 
temptation here, perhaps unconscious, that 
should be guarded. 

The gravest danger in putting upon the 
minister the whole responsibility of church 
membership, however, is to the people who are 
already members and to those uniting. Such 
a plan relieves the people of that direct interest 
and touch quite necessary to build the new 
members into the active life of the church. If 



PROGRAM OF MAINTENANCE 53 

instead of the minister making all the calls 
upon those who are to unite, or taking all 
responsibility with preparatory classes, the very 
best laymen of the church are enlisted in this 
work, an interest and an intimacy is created 
which will be more effective — certainly more 
permanent — than any other plan. When the 
minister does all the work and exerts all the 
influence in this line, we have many people who 
join the minister instead of the church. We 
know how disastrous it is in such cases if such 
people don't happen to like the next minister. 
When the only force which held them is gone, 
they fall away like a rope of sand, or remain 
to be a source of criticism. 

Now, if a church board or body has a good- 
sized membership committee composed of the 
very ablest men and women of the church who 
will take time for the work because of the 
importance of the matter, to counsel and work 
with the minister, to go into homes of prospec- 
tive members and talk of church membership 
from the standpoint of the layman, it will be 
readily seen that the effect will be not only 
stimulating and edifying to those who assist, 
but will have a most wholesome and stabilizing 
effect upon those who come into the church. 
They will at once have friends who are more 
than acquainted with them, who have shown 



54 A WORKING PROGRAM 

a real interest in them. They will feel that the 
church, not just the minister, has invited and 
enlisted them into its membership. They will 
very soon be a part of the working force of 
various societies and organizations through this 
intimate touch of these members, and be estab- 
lished long before they could possibly be in any 
other way. 

Now, as to the field from which the added 
membership shall be drawn, we shall not speak 
at such length. The Sunday school has ever 
been, and doubtless ever will be, the richest 
field for church membership. It will be a very 
bad day for the church when it is not. Men 
will be reclaimed who have been in the world, 
either because of indifference or sin. Others 
will be brought into the church who were 
trained in its schools in youth but for various 
reasons, for which they may not be altogether 
responsible, have been out for years. These 
two sources — that of special evangelistic effort, 
by conversion, and that of confession of faith 
— will ever be necessary and to some extent 
fruitful fields. But it is plain experience that 
those who are brought into the church through 
its church Sunday school, who have never been 
out of the fold, are the ones who make its strong 
active supporters. They have been trained all 
the way up — it is bound to be so. Men who 



PROGRAM OF MAINTENANCE 55 

were in the Sunday school in younger days, 
but who dropped out when boys of twelve to 
fifteen or twenty, and then come back into 
fellowship and membership when the respon- 
sibility of fatherhood makes them feel the duty 
of example, sometimes become good officials, 
whose counsel is well worth while, but very, very 
seldom do they become active in church life 
other than in an official way. Often they are 
a hindrance to the progress of modern Sunday 
school ideas, which have come into use since 
their day, and very often they are shortsighted 
as to missionary ideals and activity. There 
has been a gap in their training. They have 
skipped those years of training that are as 
essential to higher conceptions of church life 
as algebra is to higher mathematics. This same 
truth is generally more applicable to those 
brought in in later life from lives of sin. Under- 
stand, we are not discounting the rescue and 
reclaiming work of the church; we are only 
seeing its limitations and laying emphasis upon 
that larger and richer field from which the 
church must recruit. 

There is a field in connection with the Sunday 
school which is often neglected. Very often it 
will be found that the father and mother who 
are not in the church, but who take care to see 
that their children are, are outside from over- 



56 A WORKING PROGRAM 

sight or from a wrong conception as to the 
meaning and obligation of church membership. 
This is more often true of the men than of the 
women, and sometimes the wives who are 
members are to blame because of the type of 
membership they preach and live. These men 
when approached by a man, who will present 
the matter of membership from a man's stand- 
point, are very often quite ready to join the 
church. This is a rich and much-neglected field. 

As to methods of evangelistic effort, whereby 
membership is increased, and as to the special 
methods of pastoral care and training for mem- 
bership among the children, I either discuss in 
later chapters or leave as details which each 
church must work out according to local 
situations. I turn now to the question of 
financial maintenance. 

2. Financial Maintenance. In Chapter III, 
in discussing efficiency, reference was made to 
inefficient methods of raising money for church 
expenses. Very often the Finance Committee 
in the church is the most important committee. 
In fact, some churches use up most of their 
energy in the effort to exist. Undoubtedly, 
there are many cases among all denominations 
where good sense — which is a most important 
requisite of godliness — would see that churches 
should unite their forces to better serve the 



PROGRAM OF MAINTENANCE 57 

kingdom of God. Denominational passion, and 
even local church tradition and pride, often 
interfere with the cause of Christ. But assum- 
ing that a church has a field, and therefore a 
mission to serve, what principles shall it follow 
in financial maintenance? 

We shall have to assume some things here, 
as we have not time to argue them. We shall 
assume that voluntary giving is the highest 
form of Christian stewardship, even though it 
has many drawbacks. We shall also assume 
that those methods, with local adaptation, set 
forth by the Laymen's Missionary Movement, 
and adopted by various denominations with 
slight variation, are best. These include the 
use of a duplex system, whereby people can 
give systematically to both current expenses 
and to missions. They include every-member 
canvasses and such educational programs and 
detailed plans as are essential to carry these out. 
For details as to methods and as to the expe- 
rience of churches who have tried these plans 
one can get abundant material by simply writing 
to the Financial Commission of our own church. 
Most denomiantions can furnish such material. 
These supplies, of course can be secured through 
our own Book Concern. 

Now, even when all these methods are used 
it will be found that many churches must re- 



58 A WORKING PROGRAM 

sort to other agencies to replenish their lean 
treasuries. 

The average local church lives from hand to 
mouth and often faces a yearly deficit. Certain 
words stand out in the minds of those respon- 
sible for the financial upkeep of the local church 
—"Deficits," "Sales," "Fairs," "Suppers," "La- 
dies' Aid" — and the last should be first. We 
have heard more than one district superintend- 
ent say in Quarterly Conference that were it 
not for the Ladies' Aids a good many of his 
churches would have to close their doors. We 
always have had a feeling that it might be a 
real question in some such cases whether the 
ladies were real aids or not. It might be better 
if the churches did close their doors than to 
go on creating a reputation for the church which 
will prejudice the real men of the community 
who might otherwise be induced to assume a 
regular support. We have no lack of appre- 
ciation for the faithfulness of the ladies who 
labor in the church. There is a social good 
that comes by means of cooperative work for 
a common cause — and there are some ladies 
who can give to the church in this way who 
cannot give in cash — nevertheless the fact re- 
mains that fairs and suppers and all such means 
of supporting the church are in almost all 
cases a direct financial loss, when you consider 



PROGRAM OF MAINTENANCE 59 

the cost of materials used and, sometimes, the 
after effect upon women more ambitious than 
strong. In most cases it would be money in a 
man's pocket to pay cash instead of letting his 
wife donate from her kitchen. If such were 
the case, the women of the parish could be 
released for much other needed work, such as 
will be discussed later (see chapter on "The 
Program of Pastoral Care"). 

Such a direct financial plan would also 
put the church finances on a business footing 
that would command the respect of every out- 
sider, many of whom have a tendency now to 
look upon the church as a sort of charity organ- 
ization and consider whatever they contribute 
to it as a donation. The church is worth what 
it costs — far more. If any man feels that the 
church is not worth what it costs him, then 
the church should not receive that man's sup- 
port. It cheapens the church to do it. This 
should be made plain to all. People have an 
entirely wrong conception of the church when 
they talk of giving you something "to help 
you out." The Rev. Francis W. Russell, 
pastor of the West Presbyterian Church of 
Saint Louis, reports: "In the more than twenty- 
five years' history of this church we have never 
given an entertainment or a supper for money, 
nor have we ever permitted such a thing as a 



60 A WORKING PROGRAM 

fair or a bazaar. This church believes in the 
consecration of money as an act of worship 
just as much as it believes in any other service 
for the Lord." This record has been com- 
mended as the "Golden Rule for Church 
Finance." Such a plan could not be adopted 
at once in all churches, but it is certainly an 
ideal to be encouraged. Men owe very much 
more to the church than they sometimes real- 
ize and acknowledge. How much of a man's 
character is due to the influences of the church 
would be hard to determine, but it is very 
certain that many of the strong characteristics 
of men of to-day are due to the influence which 
was received by their forefathers from the 
church of the past. The hereditary influences 
that have been poured into their lives, even 
the influence of civilization that is all about 
them in society at the present time, has sprung 
in large part from the teachings and the train- 
ing and general influence of the church in the 
world. Even many business qualities, such as 
honesty and faithfulness, root back into the 
influence of the church of the past. When we 
think of the sacrifices and the labor, and all 
that has been given by those who loved the 
church in the past, not only that we might have 
a church to-day, but that the influences of the 
church might be felt far beyond its border — 



PROGRAM OF MAINTENANCE 61 

when we realize all this, we see how much a 
man is really indebted to the things that the 
church has made possible in the world. No 
matter how faithful a man might be in his 
upholding of the church to-day, he could never 
in this lifetime pay the obligation which he 
owes the church, no more than it is possible 
for him to repay the obligation which he owes 
to the state and to the school. We have a con- 
viction that if the church would take a stand 
in this, while it might suffer for a while, in 
time it would triumph splendidly and teach a 
great lesson. 

When we come now to the problem of raising 
the local church finances, we get down to de- 
tails which shall be treated but briefly. The 
church Finance Committee often has on its 
membership men who will carry on the details 
of making reports, caring for weekly envelopes, 
etc., faithfully, with a few other men of business 
ability to give balance and stability. This 
committee is not usually expected to look very 
far ahead — a year at the most. This puts the 
church finances down as a yearly matter with 
intermittent spasms of advice from the official 
board when monthly reports are read, and 
with an occasional meeting of the Finance 
Committee to devise ways and means of pay- 
ing current bills, with the final suggestion of 



62 A WORKING PROGRAM 

calling on the good ladies to give another lift. 
Such things are bad — very bad. They have a 
bad effect on the minister who knows his salary 
is in the budget. They have a bad effect on 
all who sit under such influence. It is a far 
better plan to borrow sufficient money to carry 
the church through the year and raise it by 
special effort at the end than to be continually 
behind with church bills. This is a blot on the 
church. A better plan than this is by means 
of such methods as the every-member canvass, 
the duplex system, and quarterly or monthly 
attention, to keep enough coming into the 
treasury to meet current bills. 

If, however, church finances are to be well 
cared for, this Finance Committee of which we 
have spoken ought to have a larger task than 
just keeping up the details of the yearly budget. 
If it, like the Membership Committee, is com- 
posed of the most adaptable men of the church 
— men who are farsighted, successful business 
men — the church board can give them power, 
not only to care for yearly details, but to plan 
and present and carry through, with the 
approval of the official board, the financial 
program of the church. This would include 
the yearly expenses, requiring a certain number 
of men to attend to reports and weekly en- 
velopes (which is no small job, and one for 



PROGRAM OF MAINTENANCE 63 

which many men deserve the best praise), 
but there should be a bigger task. There are 
three items we may mention in this bigger 
task, namely, provision for training the children 
of the parish in giving, providing an educational 
program for missionary giving, and looking 
far enough into the future to provide for 
coming financial expenditures of an extraordi- 
nary nature. 

In Chapters VI and VII more will be said 
on the matter of training children to give, but 
just here it may be well to note that church 
officials, as a usual thing, do not consider this 
among their duties. We have known church 
boards to decide against a policy of enlisting 
each member of a family to give separately, 
for the simple reason that it would require more 
work for the financial secretary. The value 
of training the children in giving was set aside 
as too bothersome. We admit that there is 
extra work in such a plan, but have never 
been able to see how anyone could think of 
deciding against so important a matter in favor 
of a little extra labor. This is exceedingly 
shortsighted, if not selfish. 

A very enlightening example is set before 
us in a neighboring church week by week. 
There are two families whose parents have 
been old established members for years. The 



64 A WORKING PROGRAM 

fathers of these families, now deceased, were 
long time official men of prominence. They 
both gave largely to all regular and special 
expenses of the church as well as to benev- 
olences. But in one case the head of the 
family gave all that was given, while in the 
other case the records show that the amount, 
not quite so large, was distributed among all 
the family including the children. To-day we 
still see these two families in the church. The 
mothers still give, and in the case of the family 
trained in giving, the children, now grown, 
are regular contributors, giving in constantly 
increasing amounts. In the other case we 
see two members of the family slightly in- 
terested and giving in irregular small amounts. 
The members of the family most able, however, 
are doing nothing. It is only one case, but it 
is reasonable enough to command consideration. 
We have a growing conviction that the church 
which neglects to train its children in sys- 
tematic support is neglecting one of its primary 
duties to the church of the future. This duty 
is one of the very first. We must not ask, sim- 
ply, "How shall our church prosper this year or 
next?" but, "What of twenty-five and fifty 
years hence?" 

The second matter in this larger task of the 
Finance Committee has to do with creating 



PROGRAM OF MAINTENANCE 65 

an intelligent interest in and systematic sup- 
port of missions. There is a subtle danger 
which attaches itself to the duplex system if 
care is not taken. Under the old plan an 
address or sermon was given, and under the 
inspiration of this appeal subscriptions were 
made. This address very often was made by 
a representative of some benevolent board, and 
was informing as well as inspiring. In fact, 
the information given constituted the appeal 
among intelligent people. Under the present 
plan there is danger of losing this important 
feature unless the minister or representatives 
whom he brings in shall keep up this educating 
medium. Without information along benev- 
olent lines this worthy cause will wane, as will 
any other cause so neglected. Nine times in 
ten it is lack of intelligent understanding that 
causes lack of interest in missions. Now, if 
a special committee is made by the board, or 
if the Committee on Missions is charged with 
this larger duty, it can assist the minister 
in a program of education to run through 
Sunday school and church, keeping before 
adults and children, by means best suited to 
the local church, that knowledge which will 
challenge Christian giving. 

Some boards fear this lest the support of 
the local church will suffer. Experience teaches 



66 A WORKING PROGRAM 

us the very opposite. When a church or church 
people see their own church and its work set 
in the march of the world church, they are 
bound to feel the needs of the local church 
more keenly and support it more fully. We 
have never known this to fail. We have never 
known those who gave largely to missions to 
give less at home; on the contrary, we have 
found, with few exceptions, that those who 
are largely interested in the world church are 
the best supporters of the home church. Some- 
times you hear people say: "I don't believe 
in foreign missions. I think there is enough 
to do at home." Those people are usually do- 
ing nothing at home. This is but an excuse 
which they use for not giving to anything. 

The question of the amount of benevolent 
giving compared with local expenditure often 
arises. It seems only reasonable that any- 
thing short of the slogan, "As much for others 
as for ourselves," is below the aim of a Chris- 
tian Church. I know some churches can never 
reach this goal, but it should not be lowered 
as a standard for churches that can. Some 
churches can and should do more. The same 
applies to individuals. When the world need 
is so great and the field so ripe, and so fine a 
lot of consecrated young men and women are 
ready to go and be used, we should think of 



PROGRAM OF MAINTENANCE 67 

nothing less as our share and duty. I have 
heard shortsighted men advise people to split 
their weekly subscription ten to one, that is, 
to give ten times as much for local as for benev- 
olent causes. Certainly, we do not want such 
men upon this Finance Committee. 

The third item of larger interest for this 
committee has to do with provision for the 
future needs of the church which may entail 
large expenditures of money. For example, a 
church may be going to need a new parsonage 
or a new church organ, or a parish house — 
things which will require special financial ap- 
peal. In a majority of such cases a church 
waits till compelled to move. They realize 
the coming need and do nothing but talk until 
the flood breaks upon them and they are com- 
pelled to act hurriedly or temporarily. Neither 
compulsion carries wisdom. The better way 
by far is to plan, as a man does in business, 
for the need which usually shows itself years 
in advance. This can be done in various ways, 
by creating a fund or securing yearly sub- 
scriptions to meet the need when it comes 
instead of after. A plan has been suggested 
and is in use in one or two places whereby 
the men of the church have formed a mutual 
society in which each man assumes a percentage 
of church expense. All men of the church can 



68 A WORKING PROGRAM 

join, and all have a vote before large expendi- 
tures are undertaken. When, however, a ma- 
jority decide, then all members are liable for 
their percentage. In some cases men are each 
allowed one vote. In others a man is allowed 
one vote for each per cent he shares. 

A similar plan, but better among smaller 
givers, is to let the budget represent one thou- 
sand shares, and let each person be responsible 
for one or more shares. These plans have 
drawbacks for yearly current expenses, but are 
adaptable in case of expenditures of a large na- 
ture to come upon a church in a few years. 

Whatever plans are used, undoubtedly a wise 
committee planning ahead will be far better 
than one raised for an urgent need which falls 
suddenly upon a church. Just as a nation 
must wisely care for its life by laying provision 
for the future, so a church must remember 
that it has a duty to the future as real, perhaps 
more so, than to the present. Maintenance is 
not simply existence. A church has not begun 
to do its duty when it is just able to perpetuate 
itself. A church lives to give, not to get. In 
fact, a church, as an individual, gets by giving 
— saves its life by losing. It should not be as 
a leech sucking its life from the community, 
but as the sun which radiates light and com- 
fort among all. It is this larger thought of 



PROGRAM OF MAINTENANCE 69 

maintenance that we have wanted to empha- 
size. 

A word may be said here on the subject of 
church advertising. The question of whether 
or not a church should advertise may be a 
debatable one, but if it is done with care and 
dignity, it undoubtedly produces results far in 
excess of its cost. From a financial standpoint 
alone there is no question that good adver- 
tising for local churches, by means of billboards, 
local papers, and through the mails, will pay 
for itself many times over. 

There are certain principles that should be 
kept clearly in mind in church advertising. 
The main principle has to do with the value 
of what the church has to offer. It will be 
noticed that when a business firm has anything 
to offer that is of high value, it never resorts 
to cheap or humorous methods of advertising. 
There is a noted incident of an automobile 
firm that endeavored to advertise a high-priced 
car by the use of humorous cartoons and other 
ludicrous advertising, a few years ago, which 
lost very heavily and failed in the general 
enterprise. You cannot sell a high-class publi- 
cation by the methods of advertising which 
will sell chewing gum. The public generally 
has shown that it will not be won to a dignified 
and high-priced article by undignified and cheap 



70 A WORKING PROGRAM 

methods of advertising. The church should, 
therefore, keep in mind that the thing it has 
to offer is of rare value. If this is done, then 
the church can hold before the public its very 
best wares and know that people will be at- 
tracted and held by such means. 

Another principle that should be observed 
in church advertising is the principle of abso- 
lute honesty. It is possible for a minister to 
advertise the subjects of his sermons in such 
a way that the public is deceived as to just 
what he intends to speak upon, and the more 
discriminating will feel and resent it. The 
straightforward statement of themes which are 
vital to life will attract men; and if they get 
something when they come, they will come 
again. If men, however, are attracted to church 
merely by the cleverness of advertising, and if 
there is nothing but cleverness in the service, 
they will not be built into the church and the 
kingdom of God as solid units. Experience 
has taught this lesson so well it would seem 
that no one would be deceived again, yet we 
still find men going over the same ground and 
wasting their powers in this way. It is not 
enough to get men to church. The business of 
the church is not just to get crowds. It is to 
build character and society. This does not 
mean, however, that a man's subjects need be 



PROGRAM OF MAINTENANCE 71 

dull and uninteresting. Neither does it mean 
that one cannot set forth the activities of his 
church in an interesting way. "The unpardon- 
able sin of the pulpit," says Sydney Smith, "is 
dullness.' ! We do not want to commit this 
sin in presenting our church activities. They 
can be attractively and interestingly set forth 
in public press and by printed folders and 
letters so that they will arouse the attention of 
the public generally, as well as those who are 
more vitally interested, without falling beneath 
the standard of dignity which the church 
should adhere to. 

Recently we have watched the development 
of a large evening congregation in a New 
England city where they had not been used to 
evening services. We understand that this 
has been made possible very largely by adver- 
tising in a careful, systematic way, with care 
to always give what was advertised. The 
men of this church were rather fearful at first 
as to the expenditures for such means, but the 
offerings soon became, not only large enough 
to care for the advertising, but a weekly source 
of revenue exceeding even the usual morning 
offering — sometimes twice as large. The result 
has not been just in financial return, however, 
but has been a means of calling attention to 
the church activities and standards throughout 



72 A WORKING PROGRAM 

the city. It has done better than this. It has 
given the church standing among the business 
and newspaper men of the city as nothing else 
has. Newspapers have a general opinion of 
the church as an organization which is looking 
for all it can get for nothing; an institution quite 
willing to be advertised if it can get it free. 
The church, to many of them, is a sort of char- 
ity organization, as the hospital and united 
charities. It has been a revelation to see how 
they have responded to a church coming in as 
a business firm and saying: "We would like so 
many thousand inches this year. What con- 
tract price can you give us?" The church 
price in this case is the same as that for other 
business firms. This was insisted upon, but 
the amount of voluntary write-ups received has 
caused special notice, and other churches of 
the city have begun to advertise also, so that 
it has been possible to conduct uniform and 
cooperative advertising at special seasons, for 
the church and the cause, rather than just in 
the interest of one denomination. This is 
but an illustration of what can be done not 
just by advertising but by conducting church 
business as business. It gives the church a 
standing of respect in the community among 
men who need the church and who are needed 
in its membership. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE PROGRAM OF TEACHING 

It will be kept in mind that all that is said 
here is from the standpoint of the minister 
rather than from the more technical point of 
view of the specialist in religious education. 
The minister may or may not have had special 
training in religious pedagogy. In all prob- 
ability the older men will not have had, except 
as they have picked it up in their reading, as 
such courses were not offered in their seminary 
days. A very efficient minister in the Congre- 
gational Church, only about forty-five years 
old, confessed, not long since, to a group of 
ministers, that everything he knew of religious 
education (and he knows a great deal), he had 
received from conferences and through periodi- 
cals and books, as there was nothing of the 
kind suggested to him in the seminary. But 
whether a man has or has not had this oppor- 
tunity, he must face this all-important newer 
phase of church work with intelligent sympathy. 

Of course we cannot expect the minister as 
pastor of the whole church to personally carry 
out the details of a religious educational pro- 
gram any more than the superintendent of 

78 



74 A WORKING PROGRAM 

schools in a city is called upon to do the kinder- 
garten work or teach languages. In a small 
church, or in a large church where little has 
been done, the minister may have to take a 
direct hand at first, but in the long run he will 
accomplish much more as a general than by 
fighting in the trenches. 

The importance of this matter is rapidly 
growing in the mind of the church at large. A 
dozen years ago there was little stress laid upon 
what we call religious education, but to-day 
there is not a reputable seminary in the country 
but that has its courses in if not its depart- 
ment of religious education. We have also 
several schools that are devoting their entire 
attention to the subjects of religious pedagogy. 
Many churches are employing men to give full 
or part time to this work, and the director of 
religious education in the local church is taking 
his place alongside the minister and beginning 
to rival him in importance. 

In the latter part of her admirable little 
volume, The Unfolding Life, Mrs. Lamoreaux 
uses an illustration that no one who reads will 
soon forget. It is the story of a garden she has 
seen at two different seasons. The first season 
the flowers are glorious, but the next year, at 
the same time, they are a great disappointment 
both to her and to the gardener. The reason 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 75 

for the difference, the gardener explains, is 
that in the early part of the first year the seed 
and the small plants developed under the most 
favorable circumstances. The second year, 
however, under unfavorable circumstances, they 
were partly blighted in their early development. 
Mrs. Lamoreaux does not have to argue her 
point. If it is important that flowers have the 
best chances in their tender days, how much 
more important is it that the youth of the 
church and the home have equal and better 
care? The wise farmer gives unusual care to 
his seed corn and his young plants when they 
are susceptible of the best culture. There 
comes a day, however, when the corn is laid 
by, which means that there needs be no more 
cultivating; when, in fact, cultivation may 
hinder and retard the growth of the grain, even 
to killing it. The grain is left to work out 
its own life under the influences of nature. 
The same truth applies to growing humanity. 
There comes a time in the life of the adult 
when the careful plowing and cultivating which 
were so effective in childhood cannot be carried 
on with the same effectiveness. The soil of 
the life becomes more or less hard, so that 
new seed will not take root in it. The man, 
like the grain, is left to work out his own sal- 
vation under the more general influences of 



76 A WORKING PROGRAM 

the atmosphere of God. Since this is true, it 
ought to make us alert to the fine opportunity 
given us in the early years of childhood, and 
at the same time grip us with a sense of the 
deep sadness of allowing lives in our care to 
pass that tender period and move out into that 
more fixed state of life in which no more change 
may be wrought except under the special power 
of God, when, even if such a change is brought 
about, there is uncounted loss. 

There is no intention in this chapter to 
endeavor to set up a teaching and training 
program which each local church should under- 
take. No set-and-fast rule can be expected 
to hold in all cases alike. There are phases 
of any educational program which must be 
determined by the conditions of the local 
situation. This cannot be too firmly asserted. 
One church may be far in advance of another 
in its development of religious education, and 
is, therefore, ready for work which another 
church may not be ready to undertake for 
some years. Mistakes have been made in 
this way by introducing more modern methods 
of instruction and expression than the church 
was prepared for, and failure has resulted there- 
from. Some churches have been put back 
years in their advance because of lack of wis- 
dom in this. Graded lessons, for example, have 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 77 

been introduced by some enthusiastic minister 
or superintendent before the Sunday school was 
prepared, and the result has been to create a 
prejudice against that which would have ulti- 
mately succeeded if proper preparation had been 
made. Generally speaking, a gradual intro- 
duction of graded instruction is wiser than to 
put in the whole program at once, incurring 
wholesale changes that may stir up strong 
opposition. The mind of man, like the field, is 
not ready for grain until it is cultivated. The 
first thing necessary, therefore, in some places 
is to cultivate a religious educational conscious- 
ness before seed can be sown. This method 
takes longer, but will bring results of a higher 
quality, and will, in the long run, be the surer 
method of getting real accomplishment. 

It is not possible in the space of this chapter 
to give a thorough discussion of a modern 
graded school. Such a discussion is the work 
of a specialist and has, and should demand, 
the space of an entire volume, so that it will 
be assumed here that any program of teaching 
for to-day must take account of the best 
modern literature and experience. Such lit- 
erature and experience has as its fundamental 
basis the principle of graded instruction, which 
means that if we are going to teach and train 
aright, we cannot class all ages together and 



78 A WORKING PROGRAM 

give the same type of instruction or use the 
same forms of expression with all. This used 
to be done, but it will never be done again 
to any extent, simply because it is not peda- 
gogic, which means that it is unscientific and 
untrue to the nature of growing life. 

The principle of grading does not apply to 
literature alone. It applies as well to equip- 
ment and to teaching force. Sometimes it has 
been thought that all that was necessary to the 
success of a school was to put in the graded 
lessons, and when failure resulted the lessons 
themselves were blamed for the failure. It 
must be remembered that the graded lessons 
are but one of the necessary features of a 
graded school, and that all of the features are 
necessary to the highest development of the 
graded principle. These matters need not be 
argued at length, as there are splendid author- 
ities to whom anyone can turn. 1 

A graded school will have at least the fol- 
lowing organized departments with department 
superintendents and other department officers: 
Cradle Roll, Beginners, Primary, Junior, In- 
termediate, Senior, Adult, and Home Depart- 
ments; each department having from two to 
four years of study, and while smaller schools 



1 In this connection one should read Athern's book The Church 
School, which is an admirable authority. 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 79 

may get along with a training class or classes, 
many larger schools are finding it expedient 
to have a special department of teacher train- 
ing, which may include not only training classes 
meeting at the school hour on Sunday, but 
week-day classes for the regular teachers of 
the school as well as interchurch and inter- 
denominational training classes. The best 
graded schools also have a Graduate Depart- 
ment, and there is a growing tendency now to 
form a teen-age group, corresponding to the 
junior high school, instead of a separate Inter- 
mediate and Adult Department. This seems 
to be a truer grading than the older plan. We 
must remember in this connection that all of 
this is in more or less of an experimental stage, 
and that adjustments must be expected, but 
the general graded principle is absolutely sound. 
In grading a Sunday school it is not possible 
to follow exactly the same principle of grading 
as is followed in the day school. The same 
standards cannot be set either for grading or 
for promotion. Grading in the Sunday school 
will have to be more after the natural grouping 
system of the individuals rather than by any 
mental test. Promotion in the Sunday school 
cannot be based upon mental attainment so 
much as upon faithfulness. In the parable of 
the talents Jesus makes faithfulness the final 



80 A WORKING PROGRAM 

standard of life. If the church in its school 
uses this principle, there will be a fine oppor- 
tunity to reward pupils who may be more or 
less dull and therefore meeting with discourage- 
ment in the public schools. Cases have come 
to our attention where pupils who were begin- 
ning to feel that they could not keep up in the 
public schools were so enheartened by the 
rewards for faithfulness given in the Sunday 
school that they carried this encouragement 
over into their public school work and succeeded 
where previously they were failing. 

We shall not go into a detailed study of 
each department of a graded school. However, 
there is one department, which, it may be said, 
is often poorly developed, and which becomes 
in a peculiar way the interest of the minister. 
This is the Home Department. There is no 
denying the fact that the church Sunday school 
does not receive the support from parents 
which is essential and certainly deserved. This 
support is not given even by parents who are 
members of the church. Too many homes are 
looking to the church to give their children all 
their religious instruction and training instead 
of cooperating with the church, supplementing 
its efforts, and expecting to do the major part 
of this training themselves. The church can- 
not begin to give adequate religious instruc- 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 81 

tion on Sunday. The average Sunday school 
life of a child is about ten years. They re- 
ceive about a half hour of instruction, an hour 
at the most, a week. If the child is perfect 
in attendance for his entire Sunday school life, 
you can easily figure that he would have re- 
ceived but twenty-six full days' Sunday school 
religious instruction in a lifetime. When you 
compare this with the amount of instruction 
that the child receives in secular education the 
fact ought to make us see the great need of 
some effort toward week-day religious education. 
But there is another, and perhaps for the 
present, a nearer help. That is in the enlarge- 
ment of the scope of the Home Department of 
the church school. The aged and the invalid, 
who desire religious instruction, should have it 
by all means, but the Home Department need 
not be confined to the task of distributing quar- 
terlies and collecting pennies from old ladies. 
It ought to be a vital link between the church 
and the home. Besides using its force to go 
into the homes of the children, to persuade 
parents to cooperate with the school in its 
work for Sunday, the department should pro- 
vide a program of religious education for the 
home, to be carried on there by the parents. 
I know that if this is carefully and patiently 
tried, under wise leadership, it is possible to 



82 A WORKING PROGRAM 

enlist many homes in habits of saying grace 
at table, daily family worship, and some in a 
larger program of week-day and Sunday re- 
ligious instruction and culture. The church 
school that can materially increase the number 
of family altars, where intelligent and mean- 
ingful daily prayers are said and Bibles read; 
where stories of bravery and kindness and 
sacrifice are woven into the very life building 
of the child; where noble deeds and high mo- 
tives are breathed in song and poem — that 
school is doing more perhaps in a single week 
than an average school can hope to do in a 
year of Sunday teaching only. 

In some churches it has been found very 
helpful to have an organization known as a 
"Parents' and Teachers' Association." This 
association is composed of the teachers of the 
Sunday school and all parents who have chil- 
dren in the school or are in any way connected 
with it. It has regular meetings about once 
in two months, at which the interests of the 
school are considered, and often a special 
speaker brings some message along Sunday 
school lines. The intelligent cooperation that 
it is possible to create by such an organization 
is one of the best assets to any Sunday school. 
Take such questions as introducing the duplex 
envelopes into the Sunday school, as we have 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 83 

recently done in our school in New Britain. 
Bringing this before the Parents' and Teachers' 
Association, and allowing it to be thoroughly 
discussed and its advantages understood, and 
then having it voted upon by this association, 
gives the movement a start and insures it a 
continued success which it could not other- 
wise receive. I do not know of anything more 
helpful for a local school than some organiza- 
tion of this kind which more closely relates 
the home and the church Sunday school. 

It will also be found helpful to the work 
of the school if a parents' class may be formed 
to meet at the Sunday school hour, having as 
teacher either the minister or some one who 
is well informed in child psychology and general 
Sunday school work. Such a class not only 
can give an intelligent understanding of what 
the Sunday school is attempting to do, but it 
can also be of very material assistance to 
parents in the training of their children at 
home. It has also been found helpful to put 
into the hands of parents brief leaflets or 
pamphlets upon religious educational themes. 
There are a great many homes, I am sure, 
where parents would be glad to conduct daily 
worship if they only had the right type of 
material to use. If, through the Home Depart- 
ment, the pastor or the Sunday school super- 



84 A WORKING PROGRAM 

intendent can put into the homes of the Sunday 
school simple children's prayers and attractive 
Scripture stories and other stories of noble 
characters, it will be found that many homes 
in which otherwise there would be no daily 
worship at all will at the morning breakfast 
table, or in the evening before their children 
retire, give them daily religious instruction that 
is intelligent and interesting to the children as 
well as to the parents themselves. 

A further word should be said about the 
teacher training department. There is no work 
that is of more importance in our church life 
than that of teacher training. Some one has 
said that Jesus was the teacher of a training 
class. He was not the leader of a mob nor of 
a great organization. He contented himself 
to gather a dozen men together and put into 
their minds and hearts the great teachings of 
the kingdom of God. Here is a fine example 
for every church to gather together its most 
splendid young people and give to them an 
understanding of the Bible and of the church 
and of the child to such an extent that they 
will be able to teach and to train the children 
of the future in a way so competent that they 
will command the respect not only of the chil- 
dren but of the best educated parents. Three 
types of training ought to be undertaken in 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 85 

almost every church. One will be the training 
of the teachers who are now in active service. 
This work will have to be undertaken, of 
course, at some other hour than the Sunday 
school hour. Much difficulty is often experi- 
enced in getting the older teachers to feel the 
responsibility of this work. Nevertheless, it is 
highly essential, and those teachers who will 
not respond to it ought to be carefully elim- 
inated from the teaching force. Other tasks 
in the church may be found for them to do, 
but they should not be allowed to continue to 
teach the young life of the church if they are 
not sufficiently interested to better fit them- 
selves for this task. As to the time when this 
shall be done each local church will have to 
determine. 

Another and more fundamental type of train- 
ing will be that which takes the young men 
and young women of the church from the 
Senior and Adult Departments and gives to 
them a thorough course in training. This 
course should cover from two to three years, 
and should follow one of the standard courses 
of the church. It is a matter of experience 
on the part of those churches that have been 
sufficiently in earnest to insist upon such 
classes that they can very readily supply their 
school with future teachers from this class of 



86 A WORKING PROGRAM 

trained young leaders. Even if it is only 
possible to get together a half dozen, or three 
or four such young people in a small church, 
it will be found to be well worth while. 

There is another type of training which is 
found to be useful in cities where several 
churches can get together and conduct an in- 
terchurch or city training school. In some 
instances there are county training schools 
where the teachers of the county come together 
and take a regular training course. The ad- 
vantage of this is that it offers an opportunity 
for talent in the teaching force which may not 
be possible in one local church. There is a 
very highly specialized school of this character 
in Hartford County, Connecticut. The school 
is located in the city of Hartford, and does its 
work in the parish house of the Center Con- 
gregational Church, under the supervision of 
the Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy. 
This school has been a model for a great many 
other schools, especially in New England. It 
has been conducted long enough to prove its 
worth. 

Let us now take up certain matters that 
must be considered in the administration of 
any program of religious education for the 
local church. 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 87 

I. First, in the light of the importance of 
this matter, let us see the secondary place the 
Sunday school occupies in the mind of those 
who are responsible for the work of the local 
church, and ask what may be done to enliven 
their interest. 

An eminent boy specialist recently made the 
assertion that, of the boys the church has 
had its hand upon in the Sunday school for 
ten years of their lives, but one in four has 
been built into the active ranks of the church. 
Of course this is a rather difficult matter to 
determine, yet no one with experience will 
doubt but that we have lost many of our boys, 
as well as our girls, who should have been saved 
to the church. This has been partially due to 
poor records and a certain carelessness in keep- 
ing the records that have been kept, but it 
requires little mental effort to realize that 
there has not been, and that often there is not 
to-day, the closest relation between the church 
and the Sunday school. That there is a leak 
between the Sunday school and the church 
through which we lose much of our young, 
strong life is a plain, serious fact. Some think 
the Sunday school is to blame for this condi- 
tion, and others think the church is at fault. 

Two boys, so the tale runs, looked through 
a telescope at an approaching ship. One re- 



88 A WORKING PROGRAM 

marked, "It is a very large ship, is it not?" 
The other replied, "It appeared very small 
to me." Now the difference was just this. 
The two lads had looked through different ends 
of the scope. It is a modern parable. Things 
become distorted by our own viewpoint. The 
man who looks through the church end of the 
scope may see and feel that the trouble lies 
with the Sunday school; but if we look through 
the Sunday school end of the scope we may 
have another viewpoint and see that the 
trouble is not wholly with the Sunday school 
but, partially at least, with the attitude of the 
church. We propose here to look upon the 
church from the Sunday school point of view. 
We do not claim, of course, that the church is 
entirely to blame for this leakage, neither do 
we assert that the attitude of the church is 
deliberate. W T e do feel, however, that certain 
fault attaches to the attitude of the church 
toward the Sunday school which it is essential 
to consider. 

1. Think first of the very language we have 
been using. It is a common thing to speak 
of the church and the Sunday school as though 
they were two distinct and separate organiza- 
tions. Certain services are known as "church 
services," while others are designated, for exam- 
ple, as "Sunday school session," as though the 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 89 

Sunday school were not as vital a part of the 
church service and work as any other. Has 
any service or department of work in the 
church the exclusive right to be known as the 
church? Many people who are willing to give 
their lives in the service of their Master as 
truly as anyone ever gave his life have a deep 
and growing conviction that the work of the 
Sunday school is about the most important 
work the church ever attempted. Yet we hear, 
in the presence of the Sunday school members, 
the morning preaching service termed the 
regular church service, as though the Sunday 
school were an irregular service. If regularity 
means system and efficiency, then the Sunday 
school, above all other work of the church, has 
claim to that designation; if it means the im- 
portant, or first service, then, too, we believe 
the Sunday school has prior claim. The fact 
is that the term is traditional; but if that were 
all, we would not need to write. We certainly 
would not be justified in many words about 
terms. 

The truth is, however, that these terms and 
expressions spring from an attitude of church 
members in general, an attitude which assigns 
to the Sunday school a secondary place in 
the church life. 

Ask the average official man in any local 



90 A WORKING PROGRAM 

church about the Sunday school, and he will 
confess to you that he knows very little about 
it; and he makes his confession with no re- 
luctance, for he has never felt that that was 
his business. He has always felt that his work 
ended when the financial and general business 
end of the church work was cared for, and 
that the Sunday school was a children's work 
in the church, which could well be handled by 
the women and those men not qualified for the 
sterner tasks of church management. When it 
comes to matters of building and repairs, and 
financial plans; when it comes to calling a 
minister, or deciding not to call the one on the 
job, he feels this is his work, but the Sunday 
school, like the Ladies' Aid Society, is out- 
side his field. This attitude cannot have a 
healthy influence upon the church Sunday 
school. The church school can never take its 
place in the church life as it should, and we 
never can expect to build its members into the 
church life, unless those responsible for the 
program and general work of the church ac- 
quaint themselves with the Sunday school and 
the real place it occupies and can occupy in 
the development of church life. 

2. Take another matter, that of attendance. 
Complaint is often made that the children and 
young people do not attend the so-called 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 91 

church services, that is, the preaching services, 
both morning and evening. Let us see if the 
adults are in any way responsible for this. Do 
they encourage the children to attend by their 
attendance at the Sunday school service? We 
know that one of the first teaching agencies is 
example. Children learn more by imitation 
than under any other influence, yet very gen- 
erally it is the custom of parents to send their 
children to Sunday school and to go to church 
themselves. Dr. McFarland used to tell the 
story of a woman who moved into a parish and 
was soon visited by the minister of one of 
the churches, who asked her if she would send 
her children to Sunday school. In answer she 
said that she never had sent her children to 
Sunday school and never intended to, and when 
the minister questioned her as to this, she 
told him that she always had taken her children 
to Sunday school rather than send them, and 
expected to continue to do so. Of course some 
parents cannot attend, we know, but many 
could who do not, and the majority have sim- 
ply accepted the distinction, probably from 
their own Sunday school days, and never have 
asked whether it is the right attitude or not. 
The author not infrequently has had people, 
whom he has invited to the Sunday school, 
say to him, "Why, that is the children's service, 



92 A WORKING PROGRAM 

is it not?" Such an understanding must be 
changed. If we want to be able to appeal to 
the children to be in the preaching service, and 
to come into active fellowship and membership 
in the church, we shall offer a fine opportunity 
by getting adults into the Sunday school life, 
where they feel its interest and needs, and see 
its point of view. 

3. Or, again, take the matter of the time of 
meeting. The Sunday school is quite generally 
given a time which will not interfere with the 
so-called regular morning service — the preach- 
ing service. The program of the Sunday 
services is a thing of long standing, and in 
this program the Sunday school has a secondary 
place, either before or after the morning ser- 
vice, or in the afternoon. All of these hours 
have their difficulties. The afternoon hour 
makes it necessary for some people, who want 
to go to the preaching services and are also 
interested in the Sunday school, to go to church 
all day on Sunday. (One can be just as in- 
temperate in going to church as in anything 
else.) Then, too, this hour separates the 
Sunday school service from the preaching 
service in such a way that it becomes much 
more difficult to get the children into sympathy 
with and into the habit of attending morning 
church service. The session after the morning 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 93 

preaching service, so common in New England, 
brings the school session just at the dinner 
hour of the child. Of course the Sunday dinner 
is late, so that this does not interfere with the 
day's routine of the home, but the child's habit 
of hunger is regulated by the other six days of 
the week, not by the one, so that the church 
Sunday school gets him when he is most rest- 
less because of hunger. The hour before the 
preaching service — the best of the three, in 
our judgment — if the school session is to be 
long enough, must be at an hour earlier than 
that at which many are accustomed to be in 
readiness on Sunday morning; more especially 
is this true in the city. This objection is very 
common and, in some cases at least, a very 
hard barrier to overcome. 

Now, if we were to suggest changing the 
church hour to any one of these three hours 
given to the Sunday school, and assign to the 
Sunday school the hour from ten or ten-thirty 
o'clock to twelve, is there any doubt about 
the protest which would arise? Yet adults 
are certainly better able to adjust themselves 
to inconvenience, or habit of appetite, than 
the child! 

4. Or take the matter of Sunday school 
business. In most cases the Sunday school 
runs its own affairs, pays its own expenses, and 



94 A WORKING PROGRAM 

generally goes on as a separate organization. 
In fact, it is even called upon by some churches 
to bear a part of the running expense of the 
church! Suppose, now, instead of doing this, 
we were to ask the average church to appro- 
priate a certain amount for the Sunday school 
in its annual budget, is there any doubt, again, 
as to the protest that would come, at least 
from those who have not yet realized the im- 
portance of the Sunday school work? But 
certainly it is not fair to expect the Sunday 
school to go on in this way as a separate organ- 
ization, handling its own business without any 
consideration from the official board of the 
church. We vitiate the very highest ideal of 
giving when we allow members of the Sunday 
school to give simply for their own Sunday 
school expenses rather than allowing them to 
give for a cause. We should let them feel 
that the church, as an organization, is suffi- 
ciently interested in them to at least appro- 
priate a certain amount annually toward the 
general expenses of the Sunday school. In 
some Sunday schools, where the church 
appropriates a sufficient amount for Sunday 
school expenses, the children are allowed to 
give their contribution entirely to missions. 
While we believe that the children should be 
trained to give to missions, we do not believe 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 95 

that it is well to withhold from the children the 
opportunity of sharing a part of the expenses 
of their own school. It seems better, then, 
that the children, as well as the adults, should 
have opportunity, by means of a duplex sys- 
tem, to be trained in giving toward the expenses 
of the "Sunday school department of the 
church" as well as toward missions. In this 
way the children are being trained in giving 
to the church rather than just to the Sunday 
school or to missions alone. 

The above things are true of the average 
church not because it does not want to put 
first things first, but because it does not yet 
realize the important place which the Sunday 
school should occupy in the life of the church. 
If we expect to perpetuate and perfect the 
church, we certainly must give a very im- 
portant place to the matter of building the 
boys and girls into its structure. The Sunday 
school may make them Christians, and they 
may ever remain Christians outside the church, 
but it is not individual Christians, scattered 
here and there, who will bring in the kingdom 
of God, but rather organized, united Christian- 
ity. We have thousands of efficient individual 
soldiers scattered throughout the nation, who 
will be of no avail whatsoever in the present 
war unless they be organized and united, but 



96 A WORKING PROGRAM 

thus directed they will be of real value. The 
same thing applies to the organization and 
the unity of the young life of the church. 
We simply must insist upon this work if we 
expect to build the church of to-morrow. 

II. Now, what shall be done to change such 
an attitude and such a condition? Certainly, 
something should be done. 

1. In some places at least the first task will 
be to create a religious educational conscious- 
ness, and in any local church it will be well, 
by public addresses and conferences, to develop 
a higher standard of understanding with re- 
gard to all religious educational ideals. This 
should be done not simply by getting the 
teachers of the Sunday school in conferences 
together, but by the use of agencies that will 
reach the parents and the official representatives 
of the church. No better use can be made of 
the morning preaching service than to have, 
at certain intervals, either by the minister, if 
he is well informed along these lines, or by 
some specialist in religious educational work, 
addresses that shall stir the church constituency 
to a sense of duty and responsibility in these 
things. Every possible way of stimulating 
interest, such as taking teachers to State con- 
ferences and conventions, building a teachers' 
Sunday school library, and getting Sunday 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 97 

school experts before the official board, etc., 
ought to be used to further this development. 

2. There ought to be, in each local church, 
some coordinating authority which shall have 
power to carry through a general program of 
church activity. We have discussed such a 
central authority under the name of "Central 
Board," or "Church Cabinet," in the chapter 
on "Organization and Records." The great 
thing that this would do for the Sunday school 
would be to place it in the eyes of the men 
who are finally responsible for the life of the 
church. This would allow for the working out 
of business plans and systems which would add 
efficiency to Sunday school activities that does 
not always exist at the present time. 

3. But there must be still more than this. 
The Sunday school is not the only teaching 
agency of the church. If we are to get our 
children and young people thoroughly rooted in 
church life, it is essential that they be trained 
in the church-going habit, where worship and 
devotion and reverence will be taught. We 
have referred to the distinction between the 
church and the Sunday school made by the 
adults attending the preaching service and the 
children attending the Sunday school session. 
It is a fact that in many churches the public 
congregations at the preaching services are 



98 A WORKING PROGRAM 

made up almost wholly of adults. The children 
and many of the young people are not to be 
found here at all. They have never been 
encouraged to think that this was their service. 
Now if we are going to be able to train them 
to participate in these services, we shall have 
to do more than create a change of attitude 
on the part of officials toward the importance 
of the Sunday school. There must be a change 
in the program of the church service itself. 
The program of the preaching service must 
be so arranged that it will appeal to the com- 
fort, the interest, and the actual needs of the 
Sunday school pupils. If we can once get the 
right attitude toward the Sunday school on the 
part of church officials and the general member- 
ship of the church, and can then so regulate 
the preaching service that it will appeal to the 
comfort, interest, and needs of the children 
and young people, they will be in attendance 
as faithfully as they now attend the Sunday 
school, and more regularly than the parents 
and adults attend the church. We know this 
to be a fact. We have watched such a develop- 
ment in several instances closely enough to 
believe that it can be done almost anywhere. 

Consider the child's comfort. Most church 
buildings are constructed with adult needs and 
comforts in mind only. The average church 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 99 

auditorium is arranged and seated to suit the 
convenience of grown-up people only. The 
seats are wholly unfit for children to sit in for 
any length of time. In order that the child's 
legs may bend at the knee — where God in- 
tended they should bend — it is necessary for 
him either to sit out on the seat so far that 
he has no support for his back, or to sit so 
far back that his legs hit the edge of the pews 
about half way from knee to angle. Let any 
adult try this for himself. Take a table and 
put it against the wall, and try sitting up 
straight without a back rest through an hour 
of uninteresting discussion; or sit back against 
the wall so that the calves of the leg hit the 
edge of the table, and consider how much he 
will be able to get out of a service of worship 
or a sermon that is not fitted to his mental 
taste. This is just what we ask our children 
to do. Some one has said that the motto of 
the church in this respect has been, "Suffer, 
little children!" If we are to expect our chil- 
dren to remain to the so-called church services, 
we must give them seats to sit in that fit their 
size and shape. This will go a long way toward 
attracting the children into these services. 
How carefully our public schools attend to 
this matter! Of course the children are there 
for a longer period, but an hour is much too 



100 A WORKING PROGRAM 

long to ask a child with aching limbs and back 
to try to share a service and sermon of worship 
made for adults. If the church cannot supply 
such, it is better to let the little folks go home 
or to another room of the church during the 
part of the service which is not distinctly 
planned for them, where appropriate activities 
are carried on until the preaching service is 
over. Care should be taken that this hour 
with the children is not another Sunday school 
session, but, rather, a time when the children 
are taught to be at home in and love the church. 
Handwork and other kindergarten activities by 
the use of sand tables, building clay, etc., will 
tend to keep the child busy and cause him 
to look forward to this time from week to 
week. 

But the interest of the child, as well as his 
comfort, must be taken into account. The 
hymns, prayers, Creed, Scripture, and sermon 
of the average church service are chosen with- 
out the slightest thought as to the interest of 
the child. He may understand some of it, but 
most of it is not only uninteresting but un- 
suited to his mental development. We have 
found through experience that if there are a 
hymn, and a Scripture story, and a brief 
prayer, closing with the Lord's Prayer, and a 
short sermon, all of which the children can 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 101 

understand and enjoy, the children will come 
to the service and endure much that may 
not be otherwise suited especially to them. 
This can very easily be fitted into the begin- 
ning of the usual order of service, and the 
smaller children be allowed then to go home 
or, better, be cared for in some other room of 
the church, as has been previously suggested. 
Experience teaches, however, that the children 
begin to willingly remain through the entire 
service very young, and also that the adults 
enjoy the children's sermon as much as do the 
children; that families sit together in the church 
service, and that teachers sit with their Sunday 
school classes. The order of service that we 
follow in order to include this children's pro- 
gram is as follows: 

Hymn of Praise (which is familiar to the 
children 2 ). 

Invocation and Lord's Prayer. 

Anthem. 

Psalter. 

The Gloria. 

Offertory. 3 

Response by the choir and congregation. 

Children's Sermon. 



2 They learn hymns in this session after they go out of the 
regular church service. 

3 Many of the children use the duplex envelopes the same 
as do the adults. 



102 A WORKING PROGRAM 

Hymn of Devotion. 

Scripture Lesson. 

Pastoral Prayer. 

Response by the Choir. 

Hymn of Service. 

Sermon. 

Hymn of Consecration. 

Benediction and Response. 

Postlude. 
The children retire during the singing of the 
hymn which follows their sermon. After that, 
as will be seen, come the Scripture Lesson 
and the Pastoral Prayer. Very often the 
children's sermon is closed with a few words 
of prayer suitable to the subject and to the 
child mind. This order keeps the children at 
the service from twenty to twenty-five minutes 
and releases them before the more serious and 
what would be to the child mind less interest- 
ing parts of the service. A service of a similar 
character has been conducted by Dr. Farrar, 
of Brooklyn, for a number of years with eminent 
success. A young minister, the Rev. Henry 
Sloane Coffin, of New York, has been conducting 
such services during the period of his ministry 
in New York city, and offers a splendid course 
along this line in Union Seminary. Many 
other ministers have been taking up the idea, 
and of late several very good books of chil- 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 103 

dren's sermons have been published, and some 
of our religious periodicals publish weekly 
children's sermons. Recently we have seen 
the character of a morning service entirely 
changed by this plan: a congregation largely 
adults changed to over sixty-five per cent 
children and young people, with a third of the 
congregation children under twelve years, many 
of them sitting through the whole service 
(though they had opportunity to go home), 
and not disturbing its order or sanctity in the 
least. But suppose they should cause some dis- 
turbance, which is to be preferred, the children 
in the church, learning to love the services and 
to feel at home in them, actually forming the 
churchgoing habit, or a dignity and decorum 
which is disturbed by the slightest childish 
naturalness? If we have to choose between 
the children and dignity, by all means let us 
choose the children; but my experience has 
been that you do not have to exclude either. 

4. Of course we have not completed our task 
when we have trained the children in church 
attendance. This we believe is highly impor- 
tant, but we must do even more than this. 
We must build them into church membership. 
This is our most important field from which 
to recruit our membership. Fully eighty-five 
per cent of the present membership of the 



104 A WORKING PROGRAM 

church has come from the Sunday school, and 
a larger per cent of those in active service. 

Many methods for bringing the children 
into the church are familiar to us. There is 
the "Preparatory Class," which has attempted 
to give the child some understanding of God 
and the church and the meaning of member- 
ship. There is "Decision Day," when the 
children are asked to dedicate their lives to 
Christ and enter church membership. 

What we now have to say is not against 
decisions or preparation for membership. It 
will be remembered that we laid much stress 
upon the need of preparation for membership 
in Chapter V, under "The Program of Mainte- 
nance." The preparatory class, however, has 
often been very formal and the catechism or 
other materials used for instruction, very far 
removed from that which will best prepare 
the child for membership. The child under 
fifteen years will hardly be helped by discus- 
sions of doctrine or theology, even though he 
may understand the words. We find adults 
refusing to allow their children to unite with 
the church because they think they are not old 
enough to understand, which shows that they 
have been brought up with a wrong conception 
of the meaning of church membership. The 
child does not understand by any means the 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 105 

meaning of the family, but we do not refuse 
the child the family care and protection and 
privileges until it does understand. Neither 
should we keep the child out of a church mem- 
bership for this reason, if the child has a desire 
— as most children do around twelve years of 
age — to unite. We have known cases where 
children have been kept back by parents for 
this reason, and have never in later life united 
with the church because of this wrong concep- 
tion of having to understand something too 
mysterious for a child mind. This is a very 
serious danger and one that lurks in many 
manuals for preparatory membership. 

What, after all, could be a better preparation 
in church membership for the child than the 
carefully prepared lessons of the Sunday school 
by which our children are trained? We tend 
to discredit these lessons, and also create in the 
child mind the thought that the church is some- 
thing separate and distinct from the Sunday 
school, when we call them away from its teach- 
ing to be prepared in membership. Is it not 
better if an entire class can be led in prepara- 
tion by its teacher, simply by giving the lessons 
at a given period the right emphasis? The 
minister may meet the class in the teacher's 
home possibly for a few conferences, but never 
to let the class feel that church membership 



106 A WORKING PROGRAM 

is something separate and more serious than 
that which they have been receiving week by 
week from their teacher. 

The same danger, in another way, comes when 
we hold a separate Decision Day for the whole 
school. It comes to the child mind as a thing 
imposed upon, not growing out of their in- 
struction. "In a school where all the grades 
from the Junior up are in the same room I have 
frequently found that two evils are liable to 
result. Some have seen it year after year until 
it has become about as regular and mechanical 
a thing as the average Christmas entertain- 
ment, while others have responded too early, 
and so have had what ought to be a great life- 
experience spoiled for them by having it come 
too soon for them to realize its great signifi- 
cance." 

"This latter catastrophe, which in many cases 
is a very real one, the graded lesson system aims 
to avert. But it is possible in a school using 
the graded lessons to throw the educational 
idea into utter havoc and confusion by intro- 
ducing a Decision Day service based on a 
different ideal altogether. Instead of trying to 
crystallize the teaching of those classes which 
have been studying the life of Christ, at strategic 
ages, and bring out of it its normal fruit in a 
decision, a general appeal is made regardless of 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 107 

the ideal and purpose which underlies the year s 
teaching. There are thousands of Decision 
Day services every year which are carefully 
and guardedly planned, which eliminate all 
possible harm to any pupil's religious develop- 
ment and which are ideal expressions of educa- 
tional evangelism." 

We have found the following plan fruitful. 
We assume that our children are Christian, at 
least up to a certain age, and believe in laying 
great emphasis upon the duty and privilege of 
the teacher of each class to keep before the 
members, in the most careful way, the questions 
of a personal Christian life and church member- 
ship. Rather than having special Decision 
Days, either for the Christian life or for church 
membership, we find it much more wholesome 
to keep our teachers alive to the opportunities 
which naturally present themselves in the lives 
of boys and girls through that splendid, but 
critical, period we call adolescence. Beginning, 
therefore, in the Junior Department and on 
through the Intermediate and Senior Depart- 
ments, we try to present, by close personal 
touch of teacher and friend, these all-important 
questions of individual decision for the Christian 
life and for church membership. We do not 
make sharp distinction between them, but, be- 
lieving that they are very closely allied, we 



108 A WORKING PROGRAM 

present them together, or either, whenever the 
child-life or interest seems to make the time 
right. 

In this way we are receiving into church 
membership each communion (every two 
months) members from the Sunday school, 
and thus each Sunday school class is a pre- 
paratory class in church membership (though 
not so called), and our whole Sunday school is 
an evangelistic force. Our thought is that 
instead of this critical change in the life of a 
child, from childhood to youth, being a time 
when our boys and some girls shall be allowed 
to drop out of the Sunday school, we shall 
double our efforts to hold them to Christ and 
the church by bringing them into church 
membership. This will be found to have a 
splendid effect on both Sunday school and 
church. 

Not much has been said about adult teaching, 
and not much will be said here. This work is 
important, but not to be compared with the 
teaching and training of the youth. The adult 
Bible class work is important, however. Some- 
times all of the activities of the men of the 
church radiate around these classes. It is a 
question if this may not be the best form of 
men's organization we can have. Often they 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 109 

attain large size, numbering into the hundreds. 
This is a very inspiring thing, no doubt, but 
has its dangers. Many times these men's 
classes rival the morning preaching service and 
deplete it of men. This becomes the church 
for these men, and they allow its activities to 
completely interfere with other church activ- 
ities. The organization, instead of being a 
part of the church, becomes an institution of 
itself, meeting in the church, but not working 
in coordination with the whole. 

Another danger is that which always comes 
from the lack of efficiency when a group is too 
large. If there is one thing in religious pedagogy 
that is well founded, it is the truth of the small- 
group system. Of course this is not so pertinent 
among adults, but it can hardly be disputed 
that four men's Bible classes of twenty men 
each, with efficient leadership and organization, 
will do more for the church and the men than 
one class of a hundred members. It will be 
harder to get four leaders, but if a church that 
can muster a hundred men in regular attendance 
cannot furnish four leaders, then it had better set 
itself to the training of leadership before any- 
thing else. Four such classes would create a 
healthy rivalry and tend to group men accord- 
ing to temperament, age, and mental taste 
better than one class four times the size. Ad- 



110 A WORKING PROGRAM 

mitting all the good that may come from large 
adult classes, we must guard against letting our 
enthusiasm for members blind us to facts which 
define real success. 

Large adult classes for women are not so 
prevalent as among men. Some very successful 
mixed classes are held, but as a usual thing 
the separate classes are more successful. Par- 
ents' classes, where problems of child study are 
discussed, have been found to be very helpful. 
A very successful school in Connecticut Method- 
ism lays special emphasis upon adult attendance 
with the thought that if parents are in the 
Sunday school, children will be brought with 
them. This seems to succeed in this case at 
least. 

Professor St. John, of the Hartford School of 
Religious Pedagogy, as well as some others, 
believes that we are coming to the time when 
there will be no preaching service in the morning 
at all, but from ten until twelve or twelve- 
thirty we will have a church school, in which 
many phases of church work will be studied, 
such as missions, temperance, the Bible, church 
history, etc., the children and adults studying 
in periods of forty -five minutes each, then 
passing from one period to another, as in the 
public schools. The minister would be in this 
school as a teacher or leader. Preaching would 



PROGRAM OF TEACHING 111 

be in the afternoon at a vesper hour, or in the 
evening, according to local conditions, or, if 
the community warrants, there could be preach- 
ing at both hours, the vesper hour then taking 
the place of the usual morning hour and the 
evening being the more popular service. The 
things to be accomplished in such a plan may 
be better accomplished, at least for the children, 
by week-day religious instruction, and yet 
there is nothing inherently wrong in such a 
change, though it is radically different from 
tradition and would require time for adoption, 
as the author well appreciates. 

As to the teaching which comes by preaching 
and in the midweek service, as well as in the 
missionary and temperance societies, something 
will be said elsewhere. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE PROGRAM OF TRAINING 

Teaching and training are very closely 
allied, and some things which have been said, 
such as that about bringing the children into 
the morning church service, are really training 
in the habit of worship, and yet it is done 
partly through a teaching medium, so that it 
becomes both teaching and training. The 
fact is that these two factors in church life go 
hand in hand. There is no real teaching which 
does not include training. Take, for example, 
your public school-teacher. He is not satisfied 
simply to give instruction; that is, he is not 
satisfied just to tell the child that such and such 
is the truth. He realizes that this is only a 
part of his task. He is there not only to in- 
form the child, but he is there that he may 
put that information into the child life to stay, 
and he knows from his psychology and expe- 
rience that if he is to put into the child life 
that which will become part and fabric of the 
child's mind he must insist upon the child 
giving expression to the thing he has taught. 
He realizes that the major part of a child's 
training will come, not by what he tells the 

112 



PROGRAM OF TRAINING 11B 

child, but in the way that the child reacts 
upon what it has been taught; and so he sends 
the child to the blackboard, or gives him paper, 
and in other ways very familiar to all of us in- 
sists upon the child working out his own knowl- 
edge. This is one of the vital truths of 
psychology and pedagogy. James has written 
many pages to make this plain. Ruskin saw 
this when he said that "every truth one sees 
and fails to act upon obscures some other 
truth that one might have seen." Jesus saw 
this when he said, "If you would know the 
doctrine, you must do the will." By doctrine 
he meant truth. 

Now, in the church we have failed to follow 
this important principle of education. We have 
taught and taught; that is, we have told and 
told, but we have not offered an adequate 
program of expression with this telling, and 
consequently we have produced a great many 
people who know perfectly well what is good, 
but have never been trained to express that good 
in daily life. The author meets many men in 
his rounds who say to him, "I know I ought," 
but it ends there. They have got the "ought" 
in their system, but it has no outlet, and we 
know what that means. A sea without an out- 
let becomes salt and heavy — dead. So a life, 
especially a young life, will become clogged, 



114 A WORKING PROGRAM 

unless it has opportunity for expression, until 
the principle of Ruskin becomes sadly true, 
and the life is blinded to that larger truth 
which otherwise it could have known. This 
is a very serious thing, and one that the church 
must give attention to in its program of teach- 
ing and training. We know that some effort 
to do this is offered in connection with our 
graded lessons, but there is not time in the 
Sunday hour for any adequate program of 
expression to be carried out, and the average 
Sunday school does nothing with this at all. 
About all the average Sunday school teacher 
does, especially in those schools where the 
graded lessons are not in use, is to just say 
"Be good" in several different forms. After 
awhile the youngster comes to the place where 
he thinks, if he does not say, "Well, what 
of it?" A fellow can't just be good. He's got 
to be good for something or good for somebody 
or to somebody, and when you just keep on 
telling him to be good and offer no opportunity 
for him to be good for something, he is liable 
to go where he can find outlet for his truth, 
or blow the cork and run over in froth. We 
have a great many people who have grown 
to do the latter. They have been taught that 
expression means verbal expression, and they 
have substituted a testimony for action. The 



PROGRAM OF TRAINING 115 

testimony has become stale, and they have 
become stagnant and bigoted and useless — 
even a hindrance to the work of progress. This 
is not a word against a live testimony that 
springs from an active Christian — not a word. 
Such testimonies are a vital part of Christian 
life and of church life. But there is a person 
— and everyone knows him — who is telling over 
again of the happy day that fixed his choice, 
of the experience of years ago, and that his 
experience should be the universal experience 
of the church, when really he ought to be having 
a fresh experience of the power and the love of 
God every new day. To-day ought to be 
happier than yesterday because to-day's ex- 
perience is the fruit of years of experiences, in- 
stead of years of testimony about one expe- 
rience. 

You see the thought intended. We are not 
speaking against Christian testimony, but in- 
sisting that Christian testimony must be the 
fruit of Christian experience if it is to be living 
and vital instead of mere words. We have a 
conviction that if we open an avenue of care- 
fully prepared activities for our children, they 
will become living testimonies of the power 
of God, and they will not lose or neglect the 
verbal expression. When people do something 
they usually have something to talk about 



116 A WORKING PROGRAM 

and to pray about, and generally they have the 
feeling to express it. 

As before; we do not attempt here to give 
a detailed program of expression, although we 
have worked one out for our own church. 
We have a conviction that such is a matter 
for each church to plan. We will, however, 
make certain suggestions and set down certain 
principles which we have found well to follow. 

There are already certain opportunities in 
the church for expressional work among the 
adults, such as found among ladies, in Aid 
Societies, missionary societies, charity organ- 
izations, etc. There is less opportunity for the 
men, but the men have less time than have 
the average women to do these things when 
they can be done. We will not spend time on 
these things, as they are more familiar. The 
Sunday school, or, better, the church school, 
is the natural place to develop such a program 
for the children and the young people; but as 
already stated, there is not time at the Sunday 
hour. This means that there must be some 
time spent in the week. Feeling this need 
keenly, not only for expression but also for a 
larger understanding of the Bible and of the 
church, week-day instruction has been under- 
taken and a program worked out in some 
places. The best experiment has been carried 



PROGRAM OF TRAINING 117 

on at Gary, Indiana, in cooperation with the 
public schools. Here the schools release the 
children at certain hours so that they can go 
to their respective churches and receive instruc- 
tion and training in religious education. For 
this work, properly vouched for, the children 
receive credit as for their other school studies. 
The superintendent of the Gary schools was 
brought to New York city and paid a large 
salary to help the school authorities there 
undertake similar work. There was a great 
deal of opposition in New York city, as might 
be expected in so cosmopolitan a center, but 
certain well-defined activities are now going 
on in some of the churches which speaks for 
the influence this movement is having upon 
the minds of the people. There are dangers 
that will have to be guarded against, and there 
are abuses which certain churches, and some 
men, are making of the new plan, but these 
things will be overcome — they must be over- 
come^ — because of the need and the opportunity 
before us. All cities will not be able to work 
out the same happy solution as the Gary plan. 
They will not be able to win their school au- 
thorities to such cooperation, but many will be 
able to do even this, and others will find that 
plans can be arranged which will enable them 
to start some movement and thus create an in- 



118 A WORKING PROGRAM 

fluence at least. This will require some money, 
and more faith and vision. But every good 
thing requires these things, and more faith and 
persistence in the beginning than later, of course. 
The question is simply this: Have we enough 
concern about the welfare of the church and 
of our children to pay the cost in experiment 
and criticism and first failures that we may 
ultimately work out a plan that will meet 
this natural need, or will we lie back and let 
the church and the development of the child 
drag on for another century? It seems to be 
an encouraging sign that there are a few, at 
least, who are not going to give up until people 
are aroused to this matter with sufficient 
earnestness to overcome all obstacles before us. 
When we consider the church not yet ready 
for week-day religious instruction, there is 
much that can be added to the usual even 
here. Each class in a given Sunday school 
can have some expressional objective. Even 
the Cradle Roll can be interested in such a 
thing as a children's Home, which will appeal 
to them, to such an extent that these little 
minds will learn to follow the impulse to do 
good. Every other department and class in 
the school will find some means of expressing 
its teachings if a little care is taken by those 
in authority to get information and select 



PROGRAM OF TRAINING 119 

those things adaptable to the years of the 
pupils. It is well if each class has some expres- 
sional objective, and then if each department 
has a larger task, and then the whole school 
may well have a still larger task. It may be 
that each class can have a share of the larger 
task of the whole, although there are difficulties 
here lest we fail to differentiate carefully 
enough to suit the years and so the interests of 
the children. At any rate, some outlet can 
be given whereby the children can grow 
naturally rather than in the abnormal way in 
which we have been trying to educate them 
toward Christian manhood and womanhood. 

If a whole school will not adopt such a plan, 
any teacher who has the real interest of his 
class at heart can find ways which will save 
those in his own care. I fully believe that 
the reason there are some very real Christian 
workers to-day is because some farsighted 
teacher, acting where he or she did not fully 
understand, probably striving just to hold a 
class, not knowing the laws of psychology, but 
observing the natural laws of interest in life, 
took the time and the pains, and had the 
patience to get the class together for activities 
of an expressional kind. It may have been 
only social in beginning, but often it became 
missionary, sometimes abroad, oftener at home. 



120 A WORKING PROGRAM 

In this simple but effective way this teacher 
became the forerunner of a newer understanding 
and a better day for all. Many of us can 
remember these teachers. We did not have 
them all through our Sunday school life, but 
those days always stand out as the vital days 
of our otherwise dull experience. We came to 
Sunday school on Sundays and gladly gave 
attention, even working upon our lesson during 
the week, because this teacher had a concern 
for us beyond that day. Why do our eyes fill 
when we recall that teacher? Not because he 
was better than other teachers we have had; 
not because he knew more of the Bible (though 
he often did); not because he taught us more 
good things we ought to do, but because he 
related these things to life. We did not know 
why then, and we would not think why now, 
unless we stopped to figure it out. This teacher 
loved us and was so interested in us that he 
wanted to hold us. He found this way of 
holding us and knew not what he did. Now 
we are able to see, and in a more thorough 
way apply it more universally. 

Now, there are certain principles which 
should be carefully guarded when we undertake 
any line of expressional activities. 

1. In the first place, it should be pedagogic. 
By this is meant that the activities planned 



PROGRAM OF TRAINING 121 

for should be graded, and naturally expressive 
of the interests of the children of the various 
ages in the Sunday school. It will be readily 
seen that activities suited to the children of 
the Cradle Roll (of necessity very simple) 
must be very different from those suited to 
adolescent boys, and that service which will 
fit the need of such boys will not be at all 
adequate for that of adults. It would be just 
as much of a mistake to try to interest children 
in a line of service which is either above or 
below their interests as it is to leave them 
stranded with impressions and no service what- 
ever to carry out those impressions in activity. 

2. Another principle essential to this program 
of service is the principle of constancy. The 
service must not be spasmodic. Very often at 
present our children and young people are 
trained to do something at the special seasons 
of the year, such as giving Thanksgiving 
dinners, or Christmas gifts, or flowers at Easter 
time, and this constitutes about the only 
program of service in which they are trained. 
We would not discourage the activities of 
good will at these special seasons of the year, 
but such haphazard service will never train 
our young people for a wholesome, continued 
activity in the church. 

We are bound to ask the question as to what 



122 A WORKING PROGRAM 

our young people are doing in the way of service 
between these special seasons. We believe that 
it is possible for young people to be trained 
to think that they have really fulfilled a great 
Christian opportunity, and in fact have done 
their Christian duty if they respond to the 
impulses of generosity at these special seasons 
of the year, when, in truth, the spirit of gen- 
erosity, the spirit of helpfulness, the spirit of 
giving, should not be dependent upon any 
special time, but should dominate the whole 
life of the true Christian. 

3. Another element of this program of ser- 
vice, of especial need for the children of the 
church, is the element of personal touch in all 
that they do. The children, at least up and 
into the Junior grade of the Sunday school, 
have not developed at all fully as yet the 
ability to serve well except where they can see 
what their service is accomplishing; and we 
can say further in this regard that there are 
many adults who have never put away this 
necessity of growing childhood. However, from 
those older in the service who have been trained 
through this younger stage we have a right 
to expect service without the personal asso- 
ciation, but as a stage in training our young 
people we must not forget the necessity of this 
personal contact for the development of the 



PROGRAM OF TRAINING 123 

child's interest in ministering to humanity. A 
children's Home in the city in which they live, 
or the work of a day nursery, where the children 
can visit and see what their money or their 
service is actually accomplishing, will furnish 
this element in the training of these children. 

4. Further, the service we offer to our chil- 
dren and our young people should be thoroughly 
worth while. That is, we should not expect 
them to be interested in tasks that are given 
them just for the sake of having something 
to do. What we offer should be worthy of the 
very best effort and the very highest thought 
they can give it. Young people, even children, 
will soon tire of any line of service which has 
no practical worth, and it will not take them 
long to see that there is a certain deception 
in endeavoring to train for service in a line of 
activities that are just dummies. They want 
to play the real game. They are not interested 
in practice just for the sake of practice; but 
if the service appeals to them as actually 
accomplishing something of value, then we will 
fine their interest quickening to the task. 

5. Finally, all service, if it is to be of the 
highest order, must be voluntary rather than 
compulsory. This does not mean that lines 
of service may not be suggested to the young 
people of the church and Sunday school by 



124 A WORKING PROGRAM 

those in authority, but it does mean that even 
at this early stage of life we cannot train for 
future service just by imposing tasks upon them. 
Just as far as it is possible the leaders of the 
service program ought to use the voluntary 
suggestion and initiative of the young people. 

Of course it will be readily seen that if there 
is to be unity in the program of service which 
the church undertakes, it will be necessary at 
times to direct and possibly curtail the initiative 
of some, but we should be very careful not to 
forget that the development of these young 
people in service is far more essential than the 
immediate results of the tasks that they under- 
take, and, therefore, for the future not only 
of our young people, but of the church, we 
should guard most jealously the voluntary prin- 
ciples of service. 

One thing not yet said ought to be kept 
in mind. There is such a tendency to-day to 
get things accomplished to-morrow. We are in 
a hurry for results, and because of this tendency 
there is a danger of exploiting the young 
people and children of our churches rather 
than allowing them to develop slowly through 
the stages that God has established in their 
natures. In our eagerness for results that will 
make our church life thrill with activity we 
sometimes forget the admonition of Christ, 



PROGRAM OF TRAINING 125 

"First the blade, then the ear, after that the 
full corn in the ear." We need more patience, 
more vision, more looking ahead to the church, 
in which these young people shall be its stal- 
wart sons. 

Our pews are already too full of those who 
limit their church activities to a weekly attend- 
ance upon the church services, and probably 
a small weekly offering, but who do not under- 
take any active service in the church what- 
ever. There has been a tendency, we fear, to 
be too well satisfied when we have filled our 
churches for the services, and not sufficient 
concern about filling our churches with service. 
We have often thought our task to be done 
when we have received people into church mem- 
bership, when, in reality, that is but the begin- 
ning. One of the greatest problems of the 
church to-day is the problem of the unemployed 
in its membership. I do not suppose that 
twenty per cent of the membership of the 
church is in reality active in church service. 

We are convinced that one reason why there 
is this lack of activity on the part of the present 
membership of the church is because in past 
years, while we have given more or less atten- 
tion to teaching, we have given very little 
attention to training for service. Those who 
are now active in the service of the church 



126 A WORKING PROGRAM 

are either the product of some farsighted 
teacher, who was not satisfied simply to tell 
her pupils what they ought to do, but actually 
saw that the impressions which she gave them 
became expressions of service, or those who 
through force of necessity or circumstance have 
rather fallen into church activities. But if 
we are really to train the boys and girls who 
are in our care to-day in such a way that they 
will present a strong, working church to-mor- 
row, it means that we must begin with the 
very youngest of them, and by means of a 
carefully laid program of service bring them 
up through the Sunday school of the church. 

It is a big task which is before us, but it 
is a worthy one; and if it is rightly conceived 
and rightly undertaken, it will mean so much 
for the future of the church that it will be 
worth far more than we ever can hope to 
sacrifice in its attainment. 

We desire now to mention without long dis- 
cussion some specific lines in which the children 
and young people of the church should be 
trained. Other lines will suggest themselves, 
but these at least should not be neglected. 

1. Training in Worship 
We have already spoken of some of the 
hindrances in the church building itself as 



PROGRAM OF TRAINING 127 

well as in the order of public worship 
which ought to be corrected before we can 
expect our children to be properly trained 
in the service of public worship. It is a well- 
known fact that the worship in the average 
Sunday school is often very poor. The hymns 
have catchy lines and jingly tunes, and the 
sentiment is sometimes not at all wholesome. 
There is a dignity about the church worship 
that we do not often find in the Sunday school 
session. The principal of a high school in a 
large city said to me not long since that he 
preferred to have his children in the morning 
church service rather than in the Sunday 
school because of the training in regularity, 
reverence, etc., which they received there and 
often did not receive in the Sunday school. 
Some churches have found it practical to have 
a combined Sunday school and preaching serv- 
ice, allowing about an hour and a half. For 
a number of years I have had the children, 
even to the lowest department of the Sunday 
school, come into the morning preaching serv- 
ice and remain about twenty minutes. In 
that time they receive a hymn and a Scripture 
story and a children's sermon and a brief prayer. 
Then the smaller children are allowed to go 
out into another room of the church where 
they are cared for until the service is over. 



128 A WORKING PROGRAM 

Whether it be at the Sunday school session 
or at the preaching service hour, it is highly 
essential that the children should receive train- 
ing in worship of a high order, and we have 
a growing conviction that this can be received 
along with training in church attendance at the 
morning preaching hour with great advantage 
both to the children and to the parents. 

2. Training in Knowledge of the 
Bible 
It is a well-known fact that there is a woeful 
lack of knowledge of the Scriptures among the 
youth of to-day. Some of the answers that 
have been made by college students to the 
most simple questions propounded to them 
about Bible history are not amusing but sad. 
The Bible is not taught in the home as it 
once was. In the half hour that is given for 
Sunday school teaching on Sunday not a great 
deal of such knowledge can be given. There 
is, then, the greater need for some week-day 
instruction which will be of such a character 
that the public schools will give credits for it 
just as they do for music in many places, and 
as they have actually done in Gary, Indiana. 
If it is not possible to have a regular week-day 
school, there is certainly need of some week-day 
time when the memory work and other lines 



PROGRAM OF TRAINING 129 

of expressional work shall be given to the chil- 
dren. This used to be done to a certain extent 
for the smaller children by the Junior League, 
but there is no doubt that if this work can be 
done under the authority of the Sunday school 
and in conjunction with the teaching program 
of the Sunday school, it will be far more effective 
than a separate program which is not related 
to the Sunday school program. The coordina- 
tion of all the teaching and training work of 
the young people under the authority of the 
Sunday school is an advantage which will be 
discussed in later pages. 

3. Training in Character-Building 
Of course we do not want simply to get the 
Bible into the minds of the pupils, but into 
their hearts as well. There is need, then, of 
carefully prepared instruction as well as train- 
ing in ethical principles, so offered that the 
child mind will readily accept and apply them. 
Many of the children who come to Sunday 
school in our Eastern cities come from homes 
where the character-training is not of a high 
order, and they need instruction not only in 
morals but in manners. They need to know 
courtesy and kindness and thoughtfulness and 
punctuality and regularity and order — all of 
which are often decidedly lacking in the Sunday 



130 A WORKING PROGRAM 

school. Teachers should remember that by 
their example of irregularity and lack of punc- 
tuality and unpreparedness they can undo all 
of the lip teaching they endeavor to give to 
their classes. 

4. Training in Service 
In previous pages we have outlined certain 
principles of service which we believe should be 
adhered to in any program of expression. Let 
us just remember the words of Jesus, "If you 
would know the teaching, do the will." And 
remember that it is a serious fact of psychology 
that all teaching which does not offer an oppor- 
tunity for practice is not only largely lost but 
may be a definite hindrance to the one who 
receives it. There are certain fields of service 
that will at once present themselves in which 
all children of the church should be trained. 
The local church will present its opportunities 
for service: the community in which the church 
is located will offer a still larger field: specific 
institutions such as children's Homes, hos- 
pitals, orphanages, etc., will offer a splendid 
opportunity for the smaller children of a 
school to receive training. There are also 
denominational opportunities such as hos- 
pitals and homes, where classes or entire 
departments of Sunday schools may find 



PROGRAM OF TRAINING 131 

abundant chance to express the teachings 
that they received in their Sunday schools. 
As soon, however, as the children are old enough 
their vision should be enlarged to include 
missionary service. It is to be hoped that we 
are coming to the time when the old distinction 
between home and foreign missions will disap- 
pear. These two departments of work, however 
— American and foreign countries — will each 
offer large opportunity for our children to de- 
velop by expression the instruction which they 
receive in the church. Here, again, we feel 
that instead of separate missionary organiza- 
tions for children under the separate parent 
organizations, it will bring us far better results 
in the long run if all missionary instruction is 
given under the authority of the Sunday school. 
By giving our children instruction in worship 
in the regular morning church service we have 
found it possible, by means of stereopticon 
pictures, to give weekly instruction in missions 
for ten or fifteen minutes at the opening of the 
Sunday school session. This has proven and 
will undoubtedly prove to be far more effective 
than the more irregular efforts that are offered 
by the unrelated societies that we often find 
in the local church. If children from the very 
earliest years of their life are intelligently 
trained as well as taught in missions, there 



132 A WORKING PROGRAM 

will be no lack of enthusiasm and giving for 
the church of the future. 

5. Training in Giving 

Very often children are not trained to give 
to the church until they are old enough to 
make their own money. I suppose in the 
majority of cases that boys and girls even of 
the high-school age are not regular contributors 
to the church. We will probably find also that 
these young people are giving and have been 
giving for years the nominal sum of five cents 
to the Sunday school. Is it any wonder, when 
such conditions exist, that our local churches 
often have to live by a hand-to-mouth existence? 
If, on the other hand, as soon as children begin 
to attend Sunday school, they are brought into 
the church service and taught to give as their 
parents do, and then if, through parents and 
the influence of the church, they are led to 
see the duty of gradually increasing their gifts 
to the church as their incomes increase, we will 
develop a constituency that may embarrass 
us with support. How much better it is for 
parents to divide what they give to the church 
in such a way that all members of the family 
give something rather than the father or the 
father and mother giving all. In the chapter 
on "The Program of Maintenance" we have 



PROGRAM OF TRAINING 133 

given an illustration of two families — the one 
taking the course of letting the children each 
have a share in giving, and in the other case 
the head of the family giving all. The results, 
as have been stated, are that the children of 
one family are now strong financial supporters 
of the church, while the children of the other 
family are doing practically nothing. Giving 
should be recognized as an expression of Chris- 
tian character, and should be taught as a 
privilege as well as a duty. 

6. Training for Leadership 
Of all of the needs of the local church, espe- 
cially of the local Methodist church, the need 
of leadership is the greatest. Very often we 
find a church that is alive with earnest young 
people, and yet they are all followers. They 
are eager and ready to do what they are told 
and taught to do, but few if any possess initia- 
tive or are able to lead others in the lines of 
Christian service. One of the advantages that 
have come to independent churches has been 
that at times when they have been without a 
minister there has appeared leadership, and fine 
leadership, among the laymen of the church. 
The Methodist naturally leans heavily upon 
his minister because he never is without one, 
and then with the change of ministers as often 



134 A WORKING PROGRAM 

as was the case before the time limit was re- 
moved, and as is still in small churches, there 
has not been opportunity to develop local 
leadership as is the chance under a longer 
pastorate. There is an imperative need, how- 
ever, that we shall take the boys and girls in 
our care and select from among them those 
who are best adapted and train them for local 
leadership. From among the young men there 
should come leaders for boys. From among 
the young women there should come leaders 
for girls, and from among these leaders in the 
local church, who are going to have oppor- 
tunity for higher education, we will often find 
the very best material for the ministry and 
for other forms of Christian service. 

In order to train for leadership it will be 
found very helpful to use, in some of the young 
people's classes, studies of the great leaders of 
the church. Through this study there will 
come an inspiration and also a fine knowledge 
of the church and its polity. The author had 
experience with one class of young ladies that 
was considered to be one of the very strongest 
groups of young people in the community. Its 
teacher was undoubtedly very fine in many 
respects, and yet that group of young ladies, 
encouraged by their teacher, absolutely refused 
to allow their members to go out into needy 



PROGRAM OF TRAINING 135 

fields of leadership in the local church, and 
became the most selfish and the most useless 
organization of its kind that he has ever known. 
Such things must always be guarded against. 
Our young people, as well as our teachers, must 
learn that they do not come to Sunday school 
or to church just for what they receive either 
in an intellectual or a social way, but they 
come for what they can give, and the test of 
a church and of every church member is what 
that church or member gives out to the com- 
munity in which it lives rather than what it 
receives from the community. 

It seems that it ought to be seen how much 
would be gained in any attempt to work out 
a program of expression for the local church 
had we one organization undertaking this work 
instead of two as now. The Sunday school (or 
the church school if week-day instruction) is by 
all odds the best agency to undertake this. Let 
us frankly face the problem most local churches 
have to meet. We have the Sunday school 
which offers a program of teaching and some 
expressional work. Then we have the Epworth 
League offering a program which has no rela- 
tion to the Sunday school program whatever. 
With the Epworth League comes the Junior 
League endeavoring to care for the smaller 
children, but often with no psychological sense, 



136 A WORKING PROGRAM 

as it takes children from the smallest it can 
reach, up to boys and girls of twelve years. 
These require other workers and offer work that 
can be done better in connection with the Sun- 
day school. Now, of course, these other two 
organizations have done good in the past. 
Many of us received all the expressional work 
we ever received in the Junior League. And 
many received all their experience in verbal 
testimony in the Epworth League (in similar 
societies if in other churches). We must give 
credit — and are very glad to — for this service, 
but the times have changed. The Epworth 
League often does not relate itself to the church 
but runs its own affairs with the few it can 
muster. In some cases it does a bit of com- 
mendable social service, and, where it has 
broken from the stated topics, holds a Sunday 
evening meeting that has value. Many pastors 
complain, however, that this meeting hurts 
their evening service — the young people coming 
to this and then leaving — and in most of these 
Sunday evening devotional services you get 
what a friend of mine has described in the 
following language: "The meeting begins with 
several familiar hymns, then there are a Scripture 
reading and prayer. Perhaps there will be some 
reading from the Epworth Herald, or some 
clippings from other papers. Then the meeting 



PROGRAM OF TRAINING 137 

is declared to be open, but you might as well 
raise your hand and say 'Earth to earth and 
ashes to ashes/ for the meeting is already laid 
away." 

The district League has become in some 
instances but a series of group meetings in 
which the young people gather to listen to some 
one speak on an inspirational theme, and then 
award a banner for the League having the most 
present; then, of course, there must be some- 
thing to eat before going home. These group 
meetings are held once a month in some sec- 
tions and greatly interfere with the general 
work of the church. They produce in the minds 
of the young people the thought that this type 
of thing is religion, when we know that the 
only value of such group meetings, and of all 
conventions for that matter, is to lay pro- 
grams and create enthusiasm for the real work 
to go on at home. Instead of this these meetings 
very often send the young people home to 
criticize and find fault because the home 
chapter is not a continual Billy Sunday cam- 
paign. If at such meetings, held not oftener 
than once a quarter, there were considered a 
well-defined program of activity, and the repre- 
sentatives went back home to put such into 
effect in the local church in connection with 
the general plans of the church, and not as a 



138 A WORKING PROGRAM 

separate thing, much might be accomplished. 
Now about all that is attempted is a general 
stimulus which we might truly call a "Whoop- 
it-up" until the next gathering. 

The Epworth League institutes have been 
advertised as a splendid source for the develop- 
ment of our young people, and in some cases 
this is undoubtedly true. There is opportunity 
here for giving vision and wisdom, as well as 
inspiration, of a very valuable kind, and much 
good work has been done. Some recruits for 
life service have been enlisted in this way. 
But it must be admitted that many of the 
young people who decide for lifework at these 
conferences are led to decision by the atmos- 
phere of the surroundings and the week's 
environment, and afterward find that they are 
not equipped for undertaking the work. Prob- 
ably not more than one in ten goes on to fulfill 
his decision. One of two things is the reason. 
Either the best young people of the church are 
not reached by these meetings, because they 
are not reached by the League at home, or the 
program and the presentation of lifework is not 
such that it appeals to the best young people 
who go. We are inclined to think that there is 
something in both. We know that the League 
often does not appeal to the best young people 
in the local church, and we know that of the 



PROGRAM OF TRAINING 139 

young people who go to these institutes the 
ones who decide for certain lifework tasks 
are generally the ones who cannot make the 
job. This is plain talk, but it is true, and time 
that it be said. Leaders of other denominations 
are seeing the same thing about their young 
people's societies. There was a day when this 
movement meant much to the church, but it 
has very largely done its work. The Sunday 
school with its enlarged program can do every- 
thing which the Epworth League can do, or 
which the Junior League can do; and can do 
it far more effectively and should not be hin- 
dered in its endeavor by this double authority. 
Some will not agree with this. Then let them 
come forward with a reasonable defense of the 
pitiful attempts their organizations now often 
make, while their numbers are falling off by 
the thousands every year. In this hour, when 
the world is being rocked to its foundations, 
and when governments are being changed and 
rechanged to meet the needs of the times, it 
is only just for us to be willing to lay aside 
tradition and personal feeling and undertake in 
the most carefully approved way the best for 
our young life. All selfish ambition, and all 
prejudice, and all sentiment must give way 
before the truth which has revealed itself in 
the mind of the youth. The very fact that he 



140 A WORKING PROGRAM 

has refused to respond to the methods which 
we have found unscientific should convince us 
that we need something truer. 

The time is coming when we shall coordinate 
all our young people's religious, social, and 
recreational activities under one organization, 
and there appears now to be but one organiza- 
tion in the church that is moving toward that 
goal — and that organization is the Sunday 
school. 



CHAPTER VIH 
THE PROGRAM OF PASTORAL CARE 

There never was a time when the Christian 
minister was called upon to undertake so large 
and varied a program of activities as to-day. 
It is a popular notion that the minister has a 
rather easy life with plenty of time on his hands. 
There never was a more mistaken idea, and is it 
a sign of encouragement that such an idea is not 
held by the best people of the church and com- 
munity. It is true that if he is a ready speaker 
and a popular mixei* — a good fellow who pats 
everybody on the back and calls them by their 
first name — if he can speak with unction until 
the brethren shout "Amen!" and if he can tell 
touching and pathetic stories that will make 
the sisters weep, it may be possible for him to 
loaf and "get by" among a good many people 
who are carried away with familiarity and en- 
thusiasm. But if religion consists of enthusi- 
asm and popularity, then a Yale football game 
will be far more religious than even a Methodist 
camp meeting. 

On the other hand, the minister who feels 
his call to preach a real gospel and endeavors 
to preach it with winning reasonableness and 

141 



142 A WORKING PROGRAM 

power, and who manages his plant and all the 
activities that concern themselves with a live 
church, and who responds to the demands of 
the community in which he is called to serve, 
as well as other outside demands which will 
be made upon him, and who exercises that 
pastoral care and supervision over his people, 
especially over the children and young people 
of his parish, which not only is expected, but 
needed, has a task that will simply wear 
down any man, however strong. His work 
will begin as early or earlier than the average 
business man's, and it will not cease at five or 
even six o'clock. After a morning of study 
and an afternoon of pastoral work, which may 
include the most nerve-racking experiences of 
grief and trouble or petty jealousies and criti- 
cisms, he cannot go home to his family and 
forget it, or go out to some diversion for rest 
and relief, but on probably three fourths of 
his evenings he will be compelled to return for 
one meeting or another — to public meetings at 
the church, committee meetings, private calls, 
etc. — only to return at a late hour perhaps to 
toss in sleeplessness until the small hours of 
the morning. If ever a man earns a vacation, 
it is the faithful minister. Few people know 
and few appreciate or can understand the wear 
of the care of a parish, and, as has been said, 



PROGRAM OF PASTORAL CARE 143 

the parish care is left almost entirely to him. 
If people are a bit sick, the minister is expected, 
whether he knows of it or not. He is supposed 
to be a sort of wireless station to catch all the 
groans and imaginary ills of his parish. No 
one else will do when the minister is expected, 
no matter what else is before him or how he 
feels. This, of course, does not rightly repre- 
sent all the people, and it is to be said that 
the present generation is more reasonable, but 
there is still enough petty demand to wear the 
nerves of any man who is at all sensitive to 
the real needs of a parish. 

But it must not be understood from the 
foregoing that the work of pastoral care is 
considered to be unessential. Real pastoral 
ministry is one of the most important, if not 
the most important, work which the minister 
is called upon to do, and the true minister will 
undertake it willingly and gladly. Dr. Wash- 
ington Gladden, in The Christian Pastor, gives 
the testimony of many leading ministers as to 
the importance of this work. Dr. William M. 
Taylor, speaking to the New Haven students 
for the ministry, said: "You will make a great 
mistake if you under-value the visitation of 
your people. The pulpit is your throne no 
doubt; but when a throne is stable it rests 
upon the affections of the people, and to get 



144 A WORKING PROGRAM 

their affections you must visit them in their 
dwellings." Dr. John Hall says: "Pains should 
be taken that nothing prevents your pastoral 
visits. It is very necessary for you to know 
the people and for the people to know you. 
The little children should know you. The 
young people should know you. The men 
should know you. Do not begrudge the time 
thus spent. In freely conversing with humble 
people you will get side lights or particular 
testimony that will make you a stronger man 
and a better minister for many days to come." 
"Acquaint yourselves," said Matthew Henry, 
"with the state of your people's souls — their 
temptations and their infirmities. You will 
then know the better how to preach." The 
testimony of the life and the ministry of Dr. 
Gladden himself is probably a better testimony 
than any that he quotes, and we all know of 
men, such as Dr. Cuyler, not eminent preachers, 
but who did unmeasured service by their care- 
ful pastoral labors. And, besides, we know 
that others, who were great in the pulpit, such 
as Phillips Brooks, were just as insistent as to 
the importance of this work. 

Now how shall the minister undertake this 
work? With all the other tasks before him, 
and the demands of this one upon his nervous 
strength, it will be seen at once that he never 



PROGRAM OF PASTORAL CARE 145 

will be able to do it in a haphazard way, and 
that without some program he will be swamped 
entirely. Some men have felt that they should 
start in and go the rounds, and then, when 
they have finished, just start in again and go 
the rounds. Of course, when a man enters a 
new parish it is necessary and well for him to 
call upon all his people, but after he knows 
his people in their homes, the question of 
pastoral care becomes entirely a different 
program. 

Let us enumerate now some of the circum- 
stances which should always call for pastoral 
visitation. In the first place, a minister should 
never allow a newly married couple, whether 
he has married them or not, to be in his parish 
any length of time without calling at their 
home, and in wisdom and with tact, talk with 
them about the seriousness as well as the joys 
of the life that they are just entering together, 
and get them to see, if possible, how well it 
will be for their home to be dedicated to the 
great principles of God. I have no doubt 
but that if such were the practice, many and 
many a home would remain united that other- 
wise becomes stranded in the first months or 
years of married life. 

Then, certainly, a minister ought to call in 
the homes of his parish wherever children are 



146 A WORKING PROGRAM 

born, for here, again, young people are enter- 
ing upon a new life experience; and if the 
minister has become a friend, it is possible at 
this time for him to come in informally and 
lead these people not only to a new dedication 
of their lives to the things of God, but also to 
a similar dedication of the life of their child. 
I have known one or two ministers who had 
been in a parish long enough to have married 
some of their young people, then to have bap- 
tized their children, and then again to have mar- 
ried these same children. Certainly, through 
such an experience as this a minister should be 
able to get a grip upon the people of his parish 
such as no one else could experience. 

Another time when a minister may well call, 
and when his call will be highly appreciated, 
will be at the time when the children of the 
home are graduating, either from grammar 
school or from high school or from college. 
This is a time of rejoicing in the home, and if 
the minister remembers these events and 
comes to add his word of congratulation and 
his bit of advice, it will be but another entrance 
into the lives of these people and another hold 
upon them for the things of the Kingdom. 

Certainly, one of the times when the minister 
is called to pastoral duty is at the time of 
grief. It may be because of some disappoint- 



PROGRAM OF PASTORAL CARE 147 

ment occasioned by financial or business loss; 
or it may be in the case of sickness and death. 
When the author was leaving a parish several 
years ago one of his good members said to him, 
"What do you consider has contributed the 
most to you personally during your ministry 
here?" After a moment's thought, while a num- 
ber of things ran through his mind, he an- 
swered, "My funerals." That might seem at 
first to be a peculiar answer. Very often 
people have said to him, "Certainly, funerals 
must be one of the disagreeable tasks of the 
minister." But the writer has not found it 
so, especially among those whom he has known 
through their grief. If a man waits until the 
day of the funeral, and then expects to bring 
his message of comfort in the house of mourn- 
ing, he will probably find it a hard and a dis- 
agreeable duty; but if a man goes into the 
home in the early stages of sickness or grief, 
and if he follows the day of the funeral with 
one or more visits in which he can sit quietly 
and talk over the deep questions of life with 
those who have been so afflicted, he will find 
that gradually he will receive very much from 
these experiences because it has been necessary 
for him to give much, and here, as always, 
"He that loseth his life shall find it." 

Just a week before Thanksgiving Day, 



148 A WORKING PROGRAM 

several years ago, the author married a young 
man and a young woman. They were not 
members of his church, but he had known them 
in a social way, and knew the young man in 
an athletic club. On Thanksgiving Day this 
bride of a week was brought home in her 
coffin, and the writer who had performed the 
wedding ceremony, was called in to take care 
of the funeral services. When he learned of 
what had happened he realized that he must 
go to the home, and yet he never shrank from 
any duty so much in his life as from this; but 
he went, and learned that the groom was in 
his room alone. He was allowed to go to the 
room, where, he was informed, the man wanted 
to see him. When the writer entered, the man 
walked straight across the room, took him by 
the hand, and said to him, "Now, Dominie, if 
there is anything in this religion that you 
preach, I want it." It is a very different thing 
to stand up in the pulpit, where people are 
not seriously troubled, and where they cannot 
answer you back, and preach your religion, 
than to face a man in such desperate circum- 
stances as these, and try to give to him some 
comfort, some assurance, and some reasonable 
proof that will help him through his tragedy. 
The author fairly lived in this home until the 
day of the funeral. He rode in the same car- 



PROGRAM OF PASTORAL CARE 149 

riage with its members to the cemetery. He 
returned to their home and was there every 
day for a week. Not a single member of the 
family was a member of the church. They 
had all had Sunday school training in their 
youth, but had drifted away, as so many do 
in the city, and had been lost to the experience 
of church worship and the influence that comes 
thereby, and yet, through these personal visits 
of the writer, his talks and his prayers, he saw 
a veritable miracle in modern life. He saw 
these people come out from under an experience 
that had crushed them; he saw them pass 
through a cloud that had blinded them; he saw 
them emerge from mental doubt and blasted 
hopes out into the brightness and the joy of 
a faith and an assurance that was simply 
marvelous. The writer does not think he ever 
has had an experience that did so much for 
him, and he has never had fear since to face 
tasks such as this, no matter how hard. 

Another special line of pastoral work which 
the minister should never neglect, and which 
will also be found to be a source of strength 
and joy to him, will be the calls which he makes 
upon the invalids and others who are shut in 
and away from the public services of worship 
and from the social activities of the church. 
Most men have come to know that while this 



150 A WORKING PROGRAM 

is a duty that takes a certain amount of the 
minister's regular time, nevertheless it repays 
him many fold, and is one of the certain duties 
of the Christian pastorate. In this respect a 
minister will often be called upon to make 
regular visits at a local hospital that may be 
in his community. This too is a service that 
is greatly appreciated not only by the people 
of his parish that may be there, but by those 
who do not have a regular minister to call 
upon them in their affliction. 

One of the special lines of pastoral duty will 
be found in the care of the poor. We have 
to-day so organized that there is little reason 
for the neglect of cases in critical need, but 
the poor need something other than food, and 
clothing and warmth in winter: they need 
friendship and personal consideration. They 
often need encouragement, and cheer which 
material supply cannot bring. There are also 
those who are not dependent, but who have 
hard times making ends meet. These people 
often need the minister as no one else. They 
need him to set straight their thinking about 
the conditions of life which tends to warp and 
become twisted. Jesus was much among the 
poor not for what he could give in means, but 
for the mental balance and the sympathy and 
comfort he could give, and not the least gift 



PROGRAM OF PASTORAL CARE 151 

was his philosophy of life. Among this class 
will often be the working people. Many of 
these are not only working people but are 
thinking people as well, and they are not 
always friendly to the church. We cannot 
here go into the questions about labor, but 
certainly the minister must be the friend of 
these people. He not only must know them 
personally but he must have an intelligent 
understanding and interest in the cause in 
which they believe. 

But Jesus was not a friend of the poor only. 
He was a friend of rich and poor alike. The 
Christian minister, then, cannot be a respecter 
of persons. The more well-to-do of his parish 
often need him as much as any others. In 
this busy industrial age there is great danger 
of the church losing at both ends, by the 
indifference of the rich and the scorn of the 
poor. Among these two classes the minister 
must go without compromise of opinion or 
hypocrisy of attitude, sincerely and frankly 
meeting the issues of personal and social need 
and calling upon all classes of men to follow 
the teachings of Jesus in their personal lives 
and social relationships. The minister must be 
the people's friend, and because of this it may 
be necessary for him to sacrifice those close 
personal friendships (among his parishioners) 



152 A WORKING PROGRAM 

which other men of the community can make. 
But very often he will find families who are 
wise enough and unselfish enough to make their 
home a haven for him, where he can, after the 
day's toil and care, like Jesus at Bethany, slip 
away for rest and refreshing companionship. 
Such good, sane souls are rare but priceless. 

Many will come to the minister as a con- 
fidential friend, in times of anxiety and trouble. 
The minister who has no such experiences may 
well question his calling. There will be no 
formal confessional, but to the true man of 
God will come the anxious mother, the troubled 
wife, the tempted son and daughter, as well as 
the boys with their problems. The minister's 
heart becomes in the truest sense a confessional. 
This is a great testimony to the minister's 
character as well as his sympathy and judg- 
ment, for intelligent people will not confide 
in a man unless they believe him upright in 
all his ways. 

Of course there will be, in most communities, 
a constant inflow of new people who will have 
to be looked up and visited in order that they 
and their children may be brought into the 
church and the church school. It will be seen 
that if the minister is to undertake all of 
these lines of pastoral care, he shall have to be 
about his business early and late; but, if his 



PROGRAM OF PASTORAL CARE 153 

sermons are to be comforting and encouraging 
and in any way practical and helpful, he 
simply must know his people and their deep 
life experiences. 

Now, as to plans of conducting this phase of 
a minister's work little will be said. The only 
insistent thing to remember is that some plan 
and program is absolutely essential if this 
work is to be done with all other demands. 
Some men will card index their shut-ins, and 
have separate indexes for their poor and their 
prospective members, and so on. Other men 
will use maps of their parish with different 
colored tacks to remind them at a glance of 
different classes in the parish. Other men find 
it helpful to have a parish map well indexed 
beneath a glass desk top, although some men's 
desks are so full and disorderly they could never 
see such a map. Most men keep records of 
their pastoral work, and to some this becomes 
a sort of a game in which they strive with time 
to see how many pastoral calls can be made 
in a quarter or a year. Records should be kept 
no doubt, but for the minister's own help rather 
than for public reporting. 

In making pastoral calls much time can often 
be saved by anticipating the conversations 
which will arise. This is quite impossible until 
the minister knows his people. But when a 



154 A WORKING PROGRAM 

man knows the family upon whom he is to call, 
and if he knows that they have certain fail- 
ings and grievances, it is possible and well for 
him, by a little preparation beforehand, to so 
direct the conversation that time will be saved 
and unpleasantness avoided. We do not mean 
to say that people should not be allowed to 
pour their troubles into the minister's ears; 
but when he finds, as he will, that some people 
have a "grouch" or a chronic critical tempera- 
ment or a pessimistic disposition, which his 
best advice and help does not cure, then for 
his own sake and those others who need him, 
he will find it expedient to hold the reins of 
conversation himself rather than allow these 
people this privilege which they will always 
take. Some people are perfectly good and 
pious but long-winded, and have to be handled 
in a similar way. In fact, a minister should 
never call just to be calling. There should 
always be a reason and an object for his call. 
If a man has such an object in mind, then his 
call has meaning, and when the errand is 
accomplished the call may well end. If such 
is adhered to, it will not only save much time 
but give both minister and people a feeling of 
respect as to this phase of work which is often 
absent now. 

The author was returning, one day, from an 



PROGRAM OF PASTORAL CARE 155 

afternoon of pastoral calls, when he met an 
official of the city, who said to him, "I sup- 
pose, Dominie, that you have been spend- 
ing the afternoon calling upon the ladies." 
He stopped and took time to tell him of one 
of the things that he had accomplished that 
afternoon. A man and his wife had been on 
the point of separation, and through this and 
previous calls, he had been able to show them 
the inconsistency of the course that they had 
determined upon, and persuade them to con- 
tinue their life together with their children. 
This man, who was not a church man at all, 
and rather inclined to sneer at so-called Chris- 
tian people, said, "That is real work, and if 
that is the type of thing that the ministers do, 
we fellows ought to get back of them." The 
minister will infrequently be called upon to 
assist in the settlement of domestic problems 
just as serious as this. 

It will be readily seen that the minister 
cannot and should not do all of this work alone. 
It will be remembered that in the chapter on 
"The Program of Maintenance" we referred to a 
membership committee which would assist the 
minister in enlisting the membership of the 
church. There should be such a committee to 
assist the minister in all of the parish duties 
such as we have been discussing. In many 



156 A WORKING PROGRAM 

churches the women do valuable services in 
this way. It is certainly unfortunate if the 
women of the church are allowed or compelled 
to give so much time to the raising of finances 
that they cannot be released for this needed 
work. In our church (and this is given simply 
as an illustration of what can be done) the 
parish is divided into twenty districts, and the 
women of the church are organized to care 
for these districts. One woman is in charge 
of each of these districts, and she has one, and 
sometimes two or three women to assist her in 
her work. These women do not only call at 
specified intervals upon the people of their 
district, but also look up new people, sick 
people, etc., and undertake the parish work 
in their district at the direction of the min- 
isters. We also have, in connection with this, 
a messenger service system, so that each woman 
has a messenger from among the children of 
the parish, who can assist her in getting an- 
nouncements and other messages to the homes 
of her district. 

This work is invaluable, and when it is possi- 
ble to get the men of the church to do work of 
a similar character very much more can be 
accomplished. Of course the men do not have 
the time and cannot usually work in the after- 
noons, as can the women. They often feel 



PROGRAM OF PASTORAL CARE 157 

that they are too tired to do anything in the 
evening, or have other engagements that pre- 
clude this type of work; and some of them seem 
to be too bashful to make such calls; but in 
some cases the men of the Brotherhood have 
undertaken work like this in a way that has 
not only given them a worthy task (which 
many a Brotherhood needs), but has been of 
untold value to the church. In some cases the 
men who make the "E very-Member Canvass" 
are organized to go out and call, once a quarter, 
upon the same people from whom they solicited 
subscriptions, not asking them again for money, 
but just calling in a social way, and possibly 
leaving some announcement or greeting from 
the church. 

We have found it valuable to make a social 
canvass of our church membership about every 
two months. Sometimes the men do this, 
sometimes the women, sometimes the young 
people — going at Easter time or at Christmas, 
or at some other special seasons, and carrying 
to all of the homes of the parish a greeting 
from the minister or from the church. Also 
by means of our birthday and anniversary 
greetings we add to the general interest that the 
minister and the church have in the people 
of the parish. These birthday and wedding 
anniversaries have been gradually recorded, and 



158 A WORKING PROGRAM 

are remembered regularly. We have found it 
well also to keep a record of other experiences 
in people's lives, such as the dates of bereave- 
ment, and to send a message to the people or 
make a call at this time. No one realizes, who 
has not undertaken such a thing as this, how 
much these little things are appreciated. 

As we said in the beginning, the task of the 
modern minister is a job such as the minister 
never had to undertake before. He has to 
preach as never before, because of the higher 
intelligence of his hearers and the more rational 
demands of the day, especially among the 
younger element; in a church of any size he 
must be an executive, rivaling the managers 
of large business plants; unless he has a director 
of religious education, he should understand 
this new work set before the church, and at 
all events, he must be in close enough touch 
with the movement to be in sympathy with 
its progress; he will be expected to take his 
place in the community in an ever-increasing 
way; and because of all this new demand, he 
will need to study and meditate and pray as 
never before, that wisdom and poise and power 
may be felt in his utterance and presence. All 
this will require more time than the day gives, 
but if he is to preach with meaning and with 
power, and if his message is to bring comfort 



PROGRAM OF PASTORAL CARE 159 

and create conviction, then he must know his 
people and know them personally. He must 
be able, like the Shepherd of old, to call his 
sheep by name if he expects them to follow 
him in the work of the kingdom of God. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE PROGRAM OF PUBLIC WORSHIP 

There are three types of worship in which 
the Christian Church is interested — personal or 
private worship, family worship, and public 
worship. Family worship will have certain 
elements of public worship and some of private, 
but is distinct in itself. No one can define a 
program for private worship, and family wor- 
ship must be sufficiently elastic to meet the 
necessities of modern conditions as well as the 
needs of children of different ages. About 
all that can be done in the case of these two 
types of worship, therefore, is to urge their 
importance and offer suggestions which others 
have found helpful. Public worship, however, 
will naturally be of a more formal character, 
so that the question of what should constitute 
a program of public worship becomes one of 
discussion. 

The importance of public worship need not 
be urged, except to remember that we are 
living in an age which has grave tendencies 
toward killing all worship, both private and 
public. We are so busy, so industrious, so 
occupied with the ideal of accomplishment, that 

160 



PROGRAM OF PUBLIC WORSHIP 161 

accomplishment has a tendency to destroy all 
ideal. Even in the church there is danger of 
thinking that forms of social activity may well 
be a substitute for prayer and worship. Not 
a word should be said against social service. 
The church has too long contented itself with- 
out practical social ministry. It has laid em- 
phasis upon individual salvation to the exclusion 
or disregard of social redemption until it has 
lost the support of many earnest Christian 
men, to say nothing of whole classes of men 
less Christian. It is not uncommon to hear 
men say: "I do not profess to be a Christian. 
I don't 'go in much' for prayers and the like, 
but I live my religion." All this is very good. 
Men must live their religion if it is to be real 
religion. We are called to be "living epistles," 
and the church must be a living, practical work- 
ing force, but we must never forget that prac- 
tical living and social service must root back 
into personal and social being. What an 
individual or what a church does defines what 
it is, but we must not confuse the expression 
of a thing with the thing itself. If the expres- 
sion is to have life and endurance, it must be 
rooted deep in the soul of the individual or 
the institution. And it is the culture of this 
personal and institutional soul for which we 
plead. Jesus called upon his disciples to bring 



162 A WORKING PROGRAM 

forth fruit that would abide, and he gave a 
parable of seed that grew up quickly and gave 
great promise, but withered and died because 
it had no deepness of root. We remember, 
again, how he went with three of his disciples 
to the mount of prayer, and upon coming down 
into the valley found the other disciples per- 
plexed because they could not cure the boy, 
whose father had called upon them, and that 
they asked Jesus, aside, why they could not 
do it, and he replied without hesitation, "Be- 
cause this cannot be done but by prayer." 
Jesus had refused to remain at the mount of 
prayer overlong, as Peter had wished, but 
Jesus knew that prayer and devotion were 
absolutely essential to service that would be 
acceptable to God. Over zealous people will 
ever be found who will not see this principle 
and who will not be made to see the need of 
anything beyond acts of mercy. This, then, 
is one of the functions of public worship — not 
only to lead people in public worship, which 
itself has a high social value, but also to per- 
suade them of their need of private and family 
worship. 

Recognizing the value of worship, the ques- 
tion before us here is as to how we can make 
the public service of worship the most effective. 

Let it be said, first, that the whole atmos- 



PROGRAM OF PUBLIC WORSHIP 163 

phere of the time and place of meeting must 
be reverent and worshipful. We have attended 
services where the opposite spirit prevailed, 
where there was a carelessness and informality 
and general looseness about the whole thing 
that gave no impression of worship at all. On 
the other hand, we have entered churches 
where, from the very first, the spirit of dignity 
and reverence inspired worship. 

Many things contribute to the atmosphere of 
a service of public worship. The room in which 
the service is held has much to contribute. 
Not only the architecture of the room (this 
contributes much), but the way the parish 
has been led to think of the room. If all kinds 
of things have been allowed in this room, then 
the spirit of these things will be remembered 
and felt. If it is at all possible, the room for 
worship should be kept sacred for this purpose 
alone; then people will come here with but 
one spirit in mind. In smaller churches this 
may not be altogether possible, but those things 
which are entirely foreign to the spirit of 
worship should certainly be restricted. Cer- 
tain social and athletic features are wholesome 
in church life, but it is not good, either for 
worship or these other things, to conduct them 
in the same room, as is sometimes done. 

The order of the service will also help to 



164 A WORKING PROGRAM 

determine the atmosphere of the hour of 
worship. If the order is bare and stiff, the 
spirit of the service will tend to be similar. 
If, on the other hand, the order is rich and 
human, the people will unconsciously show an 
appreciative response. To have an order of 
service that is generally known and followed 
has value that should not be overlooked, but 
the spirit of special occasion calls for an adapt- 
able order of service; and it will be found that 
the people appreciate changes in the order of 
service if you do not allow one order to stand 
long enough to become one of the established 
things of their equipment which they allow 
nothing to disturb. The order which stands 
in the Methodist Hymnal, taken just as it is, 
is very bare, and many churches have enriched 
it with responses and other added features. 
It is a question whether the Apostles' Creed 
used Sunday after Sunday is most advan- 
tageous for worship. Some churches have sub- 
stituted instead an invocation followed by the 
Lord's Prayer. This gives to the Lord's Prayer 
the prominence which it deserves rather than 
making it just the too familiar end of the 
pastoral prayer. When children are brought 
into the regular morning worship (the thing 
we have contended for in Chapter V), the order 
of service must be so changed as to meet their 



PROGRAM OF PUBLIC WORSHIP 165 

needs and interests. In Chapter VI, on "The 
Program of Teaching," this has been discussed 
and an order of service appended. The con- 
tention that there is any very great value in 
having a whole denomination using exactly 
the same order of service has not much merit. 
There may be some value, but it is not to be 
compared with the advantage gained in the 
enrichment of the service which is possible 
and the changes necessary to care for the 
children in worship. 

Certain items of the order of service should 
be considered. To some people all of the 
order which comes before the sermon is super- 
fluous. They come to church to hear the ser- 
mon and are impatient until that comes. This 
notion is an inheritance from early New Eng- 
land Puritanism, which, in its revolt against 
sacramental ritualism, did not allow even the 
Scriptures to be read. Dr. Gladden cites the 
diary of the Rev. Stephen Williams, of Long- 
meadow, Massachusetts, date 1755, in which he 
records having introduced into the order of 
service the reading of the Scripture, and notes 
that his biographer says that "this was an 
innovation which Williams had difficulty in 
sustaining." It is no doubt true that the 
items in a service of worship may be extended 
to allow too little time for the sermon, but as 



166 A WORKING PROGRAM 

ministers we should remember the injunction 
of Saint Paul "not to think more highly of 
ourselves than we ought to think." And this 
should apply equally to our sermons. In a 
service of an hour and a quarter, thirty minutes 
is long enough for any sermon, except on very 
rare occasions. If our people had to pay so 
much per word for our sermons as magazines 
have to for some of their manuscripts, they 
would probably insist that we say all we do 
say in much less time. It is hardly too much 
to say that the average sermon could be con- 
densed one half and made better by the process. 
The other parts of the service — the special 
music, congregational singing, the prayers, and 
Scripture, including responsive readings and 
song — have, or should have, as real a value as 
the sermon. They are not an introduction to 
the sermon, though they do prepare for it. 
They each have, however, a special value. 
Even the offering, which is often looked upon 
as a business necessity, if properly understood 
and treated, has a distinct place in the service 
of worship. There is a consecration of money 
which is as reverent as any other part of the 
service. If each one of these items of the 
order of service is allowed its full value, then 
much will be contributed to the general atmos- 
phere of the service. 



PROGRAM OF PUBLIC WORSHIP 167 

Care must be taken to guard each item. 
Allowing late comers to be seated during an 
anthem or Scripture reading should not be 
countenanced any more than during prayer 
or sermon. Sometimes the special music by 
paid singers becomes a performance rather than 
a part of the worship. It will help to avoid 
this if minister and ushers insist on making 
people regard this as part of the worship and 
as sacred as the prayers. Of course there are 
some singers who have no interest in anything 
but their own part of the service, who are not 
Christian, and insist on making their music 
a spectacular show. Such musicians are a 
hindrance to any service of worship. Better 
no special music at all than such. But much 
can be done with average singers, especially 
with chorus singers, if they are made to regard 
their part of the service as much a part of 
worship as the prayers. And to make them 
feel this we must feel it and show it. The 
whole question of church music is a problem. 
Volunteer choirs are very difficult to main- 
tain. Paid singers are often not in sympathy 
with the spirit of worship, are selfish in purpose, 
as well as touchy and quarrelsome in tempera- 
ment. An old presiding elder in Kansas used 
to always refer to the choir as the war depart- 
ment. In English churches the difficulty is 



168 A WORKING PROGRAM 

not so great, as they have for years laid more 
emphasis upon congregational singing. This is 
a part of worship which we might stress to great 
advantage in our American churches. Some of 
our churches are doing this and eliminating 
the quartet, letting one man, a precentor, 
lead the congregation in singing the hymns. 
The organist can be of great help here and 
also the minister by giving right emphasis to 
the meaning of the words. The people will 
quickly respond and often enjoy this part of 
the service more than any other. 

Of all influences which contribute to the 
atmosphere of the service of worship the atti- 
tude of the minister will do the most. He is 
responsible for the character of the whole 
service. Every item of the service should be 
under his care. He should not only decide 
upon the hymns and Scripture, but all the 
music should be under his control. By this 
it is not meant that he should select the anthems 
and other special music from week to week, 
but the choirmaster and organist should be 
responsible to him rather than to a music com- 
mittee. There should be a music committee 
for general oversight, and the minister should 
be a member, but all music matters which 
pertain to the appropriateness and effectiveness 
of the services should be left with the minister 



PROGRAM OF PUBLIC WORSHIP 169 

and the choir leader, with the understanding 
that the minister is to have final authority. 
He is responsible for the whole service and 
must be allowed to determine all matters per- 
taining to this service, just as a general must 
have authority in directing a campaign. The 
minister need not and should not be arbitrary 
in this. Many matters can and may well be 
determined in committee or official board, and 
he should be in intimate touch and relation 
with his choirmaster and singers; but if the 
service is to be a unit and the music in keeping 
with the whole, there cannot be divided opinion 
and authority. 

Now, if the minister carries into the service 
a spirit of prayer and spirituality, the people 
will soon respond to his leadership. This means 
that the minister must prepare for the wor- 
ship of the service as carefully as for the sermon. 
Prayers need not be written (although this is a 
splendid thing to do, especially in early minis- 
try), but they should give evidence of a pre- 
pared mind and spirit. Scripture lessons and 
responsive readings and hymns must not be 
looked at for the first time when the minister 
enters the pulpit. Not only should all these 
be carefully selected, but they should be 
studied and practiced. A minister will receive 
new interest and response from his people if 



170 A WORKING PROGRAM 

he goes over his readings aloud a sufficient 
number of times to know how they should 
sound when read well. This does not mean 
that a man should strive to be elocutionary 
— not at all. It does mean that a man 
should, and his people have the right to expect 
him to, read with intelligence and full mean- 
ing. 

People very often know the tunes of hymns 
very well, but have sung them over so much 
their words are quite meaningless. The minister 
can quicken the meaning of the words of 
these hymns by good reading. Recently we 
heard a prominent American minister read 
each verse of the closing hymn before the 
congregation sang it. The people stood for 
the hymn and the organist paused to let the 
minister read the first verse. The organ paused 
again before each verse while the minister 
read impressively. The effect was that the 
hymn was made to live in a new way. 

Scripture need not always be selected to 
suit the thought of the sermon. Our people 
do not hear or know enough Scripture. Some 
men help to meet this need by reading entire 
books of the Bible as a second Scripture lesson, 
taking a chapter or more each service and with 
a word of comment here or there, setting be- 
fore the people the message of the book. This 



PROGRAM OF PUBLIC WORSHIP 171 

is especially suitable if a man is preaching a 
series from a certain book of the Bible. 

If a man's pulpit prayers are not to become 
very similar from week to week, he will need 
to spend careful thought upon them. These 
prayers cannot be just private prayers said 
out loud. The minister is not praying for 
himself but leading his people in prayer. We 
could not do better in this regard than to read 
often words from one whose own public prayers 
are ever deep in sympathy and human truth. 1 

"We may derive materials for prayer from 
the lives of our congregations — materials of 
inexhaustible variety. There is always sin to 
be confessed, sorrow which God alone can 
soothe and comfort, weakness that needs divine 
support; and there is always happiness for 
which we should offer thanksgiving. But we 
must be very indolent, or else we must be 
cursed with a dull and unsympathetic nature, 
if we are satisfied with a vague and general 
remembrance of the sin, the sorrow, the weak- 
ness, the joy which cloud or brighten the lives 
of our people. In our preparation for our 
public prayers we should think of the people 
one by one, and make all their trouble and 
their gladness our own. There are the chil- 
dren — children whose faces are pale from recent 

Washington Gladden, The Christian Pastor, p. 135 



172 A WORKING PROGRAM 

sickness or accident, or whose forms are never 
robust, and whose spirits are never high; chil- 
dren that are strong and healthy, with pure 
blood in their veins, with sound lungs, and who 
are always as happy as birds in summer time; 
children that are wretched because they have 
no kindness at home; children that want to 
do well, but who have inherited from their 
parents a temperament which makes it hard 
for them to be gentle, obedient, industrious, 
courageous, and kindly; and children to whom 
with the earliest dawn of reason there came 
a purer light from the presence of God, and 
to whom it seems natural and easy to be good. 
"We should think of the young men and 
women, with their ardor, their ambition, their 
vanity; their dreams of the joy and glory that 
the opening years are to bring them; their 
generous impulses; the inconstancy in right- 
doing which troubles and perplexes them; the 
disappointments which have already embittered 
the hearts of some and made them imagine 
that for them life has no gladness left; the 
consciousness of guilt which already rankles in 
the hearts of others; the frivolity, the selfish- 
ness, of which some are the early victims; the 
hard fight which some are carrying on with 
temptations which are conquered but not 
crushed; the doubts which are assaulting the 



PROGRAM OF PUBLIC WORSHIP 173 

faith of others; the bright heaven of happiness 
in which some are living, happiness which 
comes from the complete satisfaction of the 
strongest human affections; the still brighter 
heaven which is shining around others who are 
already living in the light of God. 

"The enumeration, if I attempted to go 
through with it, would occupy hours. We have 
to think of aged people who have outlived 
their generation, and whose strength is grad- 
ually decaying, in lonely and desolate houses, 
uncheered by the presence of living affection 
and sanctified by memories of the dead. We 
have to think of the men and women whose 
children are growing up about them, and on 
whom the cares of life are resting heavily. We 
have to think of places which are vacant in 
some seats because a boy is at college or has 
gone to sea, or has just entered a house of 
business in a distant city, or because a girl 
has been sent away to recover health under 
some kindlier sky. There are other places 
vacant for other reasons. Those who once 
filled them have forsaken and forgotten the 
God of their fathers. We have to think of 
families in the congregation whose fortunes 
have been ruined, and of orphans and widows; 
and of the young bride whose orange-flowers 
have hardly faded; and of the young mother 



174 A WORKING PROGRAM 

whose heart is filled all church time with happy 
thoughts about her first-born at home/' 

This quotation, which reveals such a wealth 
of experience and sympathy, is not only sound 
advice concerning material for public prayers, 
but is a stimulating thought concerning all 
pastoral care. A minister's personal knowledge 
of and sympathy with his people is the source 
from which he will receive his inspiration not 
only for public prayers, but for sermons and 
all worship. His pastoral knowledge and expe- 
rience, if he is a true shepherd, will dominate 
his private devotions as well as his public 
utterances. If this is not true, then his private 
worship must have little reality, and his public 
utterance will become "sounding brass and 
clanging cymbal." This is but another argu- 
ment for the need of pastoral care in the min- 
ister's own experience aside from this need 
among the people. 

The whole matter of public worship is an 
exceedingly serious thing which no minister 
can lightly pass over. "The wonder to me," 
said a successful minister, "is not that people 
do not come to church, as we think they should. 
The wonder is that they come at all." How 
much truth there is in this! Why should peo- 
ple come to hear one man preach from week 
to week? The answer is that they don't come 



PROGRAM OF PUBLIC WORSHIP 175 

just to hear him preach. They come because 
of the natural human need to worship God. 
They come because the soul is hungry for 
spiritual food. Some do not come, it is true. 
They have lost the hunger and the soul is 
gradually and unconsciously starving. This 
very fact ought to spur us to lay new emphasis 
upon the service of worship that it may be of 
sufficient interest to draw people and be whole- 
some enough to satisfy them when they come. 
Certainly, this lays upon us the larger respon- 
sibility of training the children in worship, 
either in the church service or Sunday school, 
so that they will not slip away when they are 
old. This matter is elsewhere given fuller 
consideration. 



CHAPTER X 
THE PROGRAM OF PREACHING 

Preaching is closely related to worship, not 
only because it usually comes at the same hour 
but because private worship or devotion on 
the part of the preacher is the background of 
his preaching, and because worship, both 
private and public, on the part of the congre- 
gation is a fundamental preparation for preach- 
ing. It matters not how much of a scholar 
or an orator a man is, the truth which he 
attempts to bring to his people must spring 
from a devout heart and mind if it is to change 
men's lives. Men may be interested, even 
captivated by traits of mental power and thrills 
of oratorical ability, but if the preacher is to 
bring a living message from God to men, he 
must have lived with God to get that message. 
It was said of one of our older ministers that 
"he had the habit of dropping sentences which 
changed men's lives," a habit that a man 
cannot acquire unless he knows well the private 
hours of communion with God. 

The same can be said of the congregation. 
They will carry away from the sermon much 
or little accordingly as they have brought 

176 



PROGRAM OF PREACHING 177 

much or little to the service. If they come with 
minds and hearts which have never been made 
deep by the presence of God or are filled with 
things foreign to the spirit of the hour, they 
will carry away but a shallow and superficial 
store of truth. The deeper truths will not 
even be perceived as such. The comments to 
the minister at the door often reveal this fact. 
But if they are men and women accustomed to 
devotion, both private and public, and especially 
if they make a practice of spending some time 
in devotional preparation for the service which 
they are about to attend, they will bring to 
the service hearts and minds so responsive to 
the truth, that they will carry away the best 
fruits of the message. The sensitive preacher 
feels this and can soon tell whether a congre- 
gation is prepared or not. If either congrega- 
tion or minister is unprepared in this respect, 
the minister will often have a difficult time in 
delivering his message, and the people will 
feel it. Ministers often say, "I had a hard 
time Sunday, and I don't know why; I thought 
I was well prepared." Here is certainly one 
place to look for the reason. Either in the 
minister's lack of personal devotion, or that of 
the congregation, will be found the reason for 
many such failures. No truth is so vital, so 
powerful, and so persuasive as the actual 



178 A WORKING PROGRAM 

presence of God in the heart of the man who 
speaks. This is a very easy thing to say and 
a very hard thing to define, but the man who 
has experienced it knows exactly what is meant. 
This was the truth Jesus emphasized in the 
parable of the sower. It would be better to 
call this the parable of the soil, for the truth 
in the parable is that seed, no matter how 
good, must have fertile soil, with depth, if a 
harvest is to be expected. We can see, then, 
that devotion on the part of preacher and 
hearer is the background of all preaching. 

It may be well to say that this chapter is 
not an attempt at homiletics but, rather, a 
consideration of a working program for the 
local church, which excludes many things that 
otherwise would find place in a consideration 
of preaching. We should have to discuss the 
preacher himself, his character and qualifica- 
tions; we might well consider the things he 
should study as well as his methods of prepara- 
tion and presentation of truth. These could 
well occupy the space of a volume, and have 
been well done. But here let us confine our- 
selves to the program of preaching. 

Dr. Jefferson, in Building the Church, has 
said that a program is a minister's salvation. 
We might say that it is not only the minister's 
salvation but that of the church as well. How hap- 



PROGRAM OF PREACHING 179 

hazard and unrelated is much of our preaching! 
Many men, if their testimony is true, do not 
know from week to week what they will preach 
next. There is no body of teaching in their 
minds; they are not trying to carry their 
people along to some definite goal, but from 
Sunday to Sunday they preach from the 
Scripture whatever may suggest itself, by read- 
ing or passing events, with no continuity or 
sweep of purpose. No true teacher would 
think of doing this, but the ministry often think 
of nothing else, or do not think of it at all. 
Teaching is one of the great functions of preach- 
ing, and we might have discussed preaching 
under the chapter on teaching with appro- 
priateness. Why should a minister not carry 
along a body of teaching by his sermons, so 
that at the end of a year, or a given period, 
his people will have received a definite and 
more or less complete understanding of a large 
truth? The thought is not that a minister 
should be continually preaching series of ser- 
mons, though this is a part of the plan in 
mind. The people need not even know — and 
perhaps it is better that they do not know — 
exactly what the minister is trying to do, but 
a minister should study his people and deter- 
mine what some of the broad fundamental 
needs of the parish are, and then draw his 



180 A WORKING PROGRAM 

program of preaching to meet this need. Of 
course he will have to pause here and there 
for special occasions and special seasons of the 
year, and he may carry along several phases 
of the program under one larger plan, but all 
through the period, whether it be a part of a 
year, or a year, or several years, will run this 
common thought and purpose. For example, 
let us take a church that needs to be brought 
up to a higher standard and a better under- 
standing of missions. This cannot be done 
in a single sermon by any means, but by a care- 
fully prepared program of preaching, supple- 
mented by teaching and training, this can be 
done and done well. It cannot be done in a 
year and may take a dozen years, but is worth 
twice the time. 

Or take the newer truth of religious educa- 
tion. If a minister tries to force this upon a 
church, he not only may discredit himself but 
the movement as well, and delay its progress 
in a church for years. But by a carefully 
thought-out program, judiciously and gradually 
applied, a church can be led up to the adoption 
of that which they would be otherwise unpre- 
pared for. It may be one matter or another, 
but most churches will be found in need of some 
fundamental teaching and training along broad 
basic lines. 



PROGRAM OF PREACHING 181 

It is harder for the Methodist minister to 
meet this need than the ministers of inde- 
pendent churches, because the habit of short 
pastorates is still with them, though the time 
limit has been removed, but it is a gratifying 
thing that this habit is changing, especially in 
larger churches. It should be remembered 
though that sometimes the smaller churches, 
especially in rural districts, need this longer 
period of labor, where a constructive program 
can be carried out, more than do the larger 
churches, where strong laymen aid so much in 
the work. We need consecrated young men 
who will devote their lives to these problems 
and not simply use the small church as a step- 
ping-stone. We must also have some adjust- 
ment of salaries so that men who are willing to 
so work can have a decent living and proper 
provision for the education of their families 
and for their own culture and refinement. 

Each local church should be looked upon as 
a field for a campaign, and in the Methodist 
Church there is great possibility in looking upon 
a group of churches, such as a district or a 
Conference, as a field for a campaign, if the 
leadership is adequate and the group of churches 
are such that their problems are common. Too 
often our districts include churches whose 
problems are the very opposite, such as city 



182 A WORKING PROGRAM 

churches with extreme city conditions and rural 
churches with problems very opposite. This 
is true in some of the territory about New 
York city. If the city churches were stronger, 
they could well take, as a part of their task, 
the study and help of these weaker churches, 
but they often have all and more than they 
can do to maintain themselves. It would seem 
that one of the serious tasks of the leadership 
of the church would be the careful redistricting 
of certain sections, so that a group of churches 
with similar problems might be led to under- 
take a campaign together. In such case each 
church would need to undertake its share in its 
own local field, meeting its own peculiar situa- 
tion. This would call for a program of education 
which preaching would enter into as a very 
determining factor. 

It must not be understood that all the 
preaching is to be of this problem kind. It 
will be remembered that we have said earlier 
that such a program must be carried along 
with other special lines of preaching as well as 
occasional sermons which the times and con- 
ditions demand. But as near as possible the 
whole body of preaching should be anticipated 
and outlined toward a definite goal. There 
will be preaching to meet individual needs. 
People need comfort; they need encourage- 



PROGRAM OF PREACHING 183 

ment; they need to be straightened out and 
directed in their thinking; they need to know 
the ways of sin and temptation and the release 
from both which the gospel offers; they need 
guidance and light on the matters of prayer 
and doctrine; they need entreaty and decision 
— and salvation. All these and more do they 
need. But all these can be done, and better 
done, if thought out in advance and built into 
a program rather than if left to the inspiration 
of the week. Preaching is an individual mes- 
sage, but it is also a social message. Sermons 
that are intended for one individual will always 
meet the needs of many. When, therefore, a 
man knows his people and his community, it 
is possible for him to make even these individual 
sermons into a definite program which fits into 
the larger general program of preaching. 

Suppose, for example, that a minister finds 
that many of the families in his church are 
doing nothing whatever in the way of family 
worship (not even saying grace at the table, 
except when the minister is there, and then 
sometimes forgetting it), and he believes, as 
he should believe, that it is not only a needed 
thing, but a possible thing to lead many of his 
families, especially those who have young 
children, to see their duty and take up some 
simple but real plan of home devotion. Will 



184? A WORKING PROGRAM 

it be best for him, and will he accomplish most, 
by just preaching a sermon some week when 
he feels like it, upon this theme, or would he 
probably accomplish much more by running a 
series of half a dozen sermons on the home, 
touching various phases of its life and drawing 
people to decision at its close? This series need 
not be carried along consecutively, but might 
even cover a whole year and be supplemented 
by personal letters and calls. Nothing, how- 
ever, would be more appropriate at the Lenten 
season, for example, than such a series, closing 
with a definite opportunity for people to 
pledge themselves to undertake some form of 
family devotion. It is always well to let people 
do something when they think they ought. 
The time to strike the iron is when it is hot. 
It is not well to heat it unless you intend to 
strike it. So it is with men. When they are 
aroused to the sense of duty the opportunity 
should be opened for them to undertake that 
duty. A simple card in the pews following the 
last sermon of such a series on which is printed 
something as the following will do this: "I 
would be glad to have the minister call and 
consult with us about home devotions"; or it 
may be well to have two or three decisions 
which people may check, such as follow: 

oWe will conduct family worship in the home. 



PROGRAM OF PREACHING 185 

DWe will revive the family altar. 

nWe would be glad to have the minister call 
and suggest plans for religious education in 
our home. 

These three will meet the needs of different 
minds. The older people will be more likely to 
sign the first two; the younger people the third. 
It might be well also to have another which 
will give opportunity to pledge simply to say 
grace at meals. Some will sign this who will 
not sign the others, and these people, if followed 
up, can often be persuaded to use a bit of 
Scripture before grace, at least in the morning, 
and soon to be having Scripture and prayer at 
the morning meal. This is but an illustration 
of what may be done (because it has been 
done), not only with the question of family de- 
votions but with an innumerable number of 
other matters pertaining to church and family 
life. Certainly, this is worth while. It gets 
somewhere, while haphazard, spasmodic preach- 
ing does not. 

We hold evangelistic campaigns and urge peo- 
ple to decide for Christ. This is a part of any 
program of preaching; but why let this become 
a campaign and let all the other important 
matters be treated in a slipshod way? The 
program method of preaching makes the min- 
ister work, but it will be found in the long 



186 A WORKING PROGRAM 

run to be much less of a strain, because his 
work is laid out ahead and he is not forever 
worrying as to what he will preach about next; 
and, besides, the results will be so encouraging 
and inspiring that the work will seem much 
easier. 

There are four definite services where such a 
program can be carried on : the morning preach- 
ing service, the evening service, a vesper ser- 
vice — if such is better than an evening service 
— and the midweek service. It should be said 
that the midweek service certainly ought not 
to be another preaching service, but it certainly 
can be a service where a body of teaching can 
well be 'Carried on. This can be done and still 
give ample opportunity for expression on the 
part of the people. This service is the people's 
service and should be so considered and kept 
to this purpose; but even so there can be teach- 
ing carried through the year here with far 
better results to all concerned than just to 
pursue a hit-and-miss method of service. It 
would certainly seem that much more could 
be made, and should be made, of this midweek 
service than we are making. This service as 
now conducted, in the most of our churches, 
appeals to only a few people, and these people 
have a tendency to insist upon a type of service 
which keeps the majority of the parish away. 



PROGRAM OF PREACHING 187 

This service, as has been said, should be the 
people's service, but it should be all the people's 
service and not just the service of a very small 
part of the membership of the church who feel 
that only one type of service is consistent with 
the purpose of this hour. A church is a de- 
mocracy, and no small minority has a right to 
determine the character of any service. There 
is no question but that this service can be made 
to serve the needs of a much larger constituency 
than it usually now does. This can be done too 
without sacrificing the vital things for which 
this service has always been used — that is, 
prayer and devotion. Better prayer and better 
devotion and better expression in testimony 
will come if there is something real to pray 
about and talk about than can possibly come 
by just letting people talk and pray about 
anything which happens to come to mind. A 
body of teaching upon some of the vital sub- 
jects of the Christian life, such as prayer, 
temptations, the Bible, etc., as well as many 
practical subjects of everyday life, can be very 
well discussed here to good advantage. These 
things, if properly handled, and if too long 
prayers are tactfully eliminated, and the sing- 
ing is bright and strong, and the younger people 
are allowed to come and encouraged to par- 
ticipate, will soon bring this service up to the 



188 A WORKING PROGRAM 

place where it will serve a much larger pro- 
portion of the membership than at present. 
It may be necessary to change the entire char- 
acter of the service for a time. People are afraid 
of this service, and much must be done to 
assure them that it is really for them; but it 
should be for them, and they and all must be 
made to see and believe this. Is it not far 
better to do this, though we sacrifice for a time 
some things we would like to keep, if we can 
win these people who are not now reached 
at all? After these people have taken the 
first step, which is attendance and familiarity, 
and when they come to feel the need of such 
a service and are participating in it, then can 
be added those things which should be made 
prominent here. It is doubtful, however, 
whether they would ever be added in the old 
form, but this would no doubt be best anyhow. 

Without going into details as to plans let 
us just think of this service as one of the means 
by which the church can be taught and trained 
through a part of the program of preaching, 
thinking of preaching as one form of teaching. 

The morning service lends itself more fully 
to the program of preaching than does any 
other service. Here all such matters as missions, 
and temperance, and family religion, and all 
personal religious matters can be taken up 



PROGRAM OF PREACHING 189 

with the minutest care; here the children will 
be trained in worship, and the parents in the 
care of the children; here the great truths of 
religion will be expounded and the people led 
to higher and nobler purposes; here the young 
men and the young women will be led to con- 
sider their own peculiar needs of life, and here 
the stranger will be refreshed and the sinner 
convicted; here the Bible will be expounded and 
the church history and life made real; here 
Christ will be preached, his teachings made 
human and the power of his life made to live 
in the lives of men. All this and much more 
will come through this service, and it will with- 
out question come with far superior effective- 
ness if it is presented as a program which 
follows the careful study of the needs of the 
local church. This study will not be made 
by the minister alone, but by the good and 
wise laymen whom he will gather about him 
for this important task. 

At the evening service or the vesper service 
other things may be considered. The morning 
service has been mentioned as an opportunity 
for convicting men of sin. The evening service 
is often thought of as the evangelistic service, 
where evangelistic preaching holds sway. Now, 
there might profitably be some discussion as to 
just what constitutes evangelistic preaching. 



190 A WORKING PROGRAM 

I am persuaded that that which is often char- 
acterized as evangelistic preaching is not preach- 
ing at all. "Evangelism" is a much bigger 
word than it is often used to mean. It cer- 
tainly means more than just a campaign for 
conversions. Evangelism may well characterize 
the entire work of the church. It certainly 
covers the teaching work of the church. No 
one has a right to say that a church is not 
evangelistic because it does not have a revival 
each winter. No one can rightly call a minister 
unevangelistic because he does not continually 
give appeals for public decisions. A man or a 
church may be just as evangelistic and be 
making just as many thorough Christians 
though not continually calling for conversions. 
They may be keeping people from falling into 
conditions from which they will need converting. 
This work of preservation is certainly a more 
important work than the work of rescue, al- 
though such a statement is not to minimize the 
work of rescue in the least. It must be said, 
further, that many men who need converting 
from indifference as well as from personal and 
social sins cannot be reached by public appeal 
which calls for public decision. Some of these 
men may be very prominent in the community 
— in social and business life — and while they 
will not be reached by public appeal they may 



PROGRAM OF PREACHING 191 

be won by personal effort. It may be well 
too that preparation for these personal decisions, 
which may be made only within the soul of 
the individual, will be made in these programs 
of preaching which tend to cover more fully 
the questions of personal sin and social 
obligation. 

These evening or vesper services, then, may 
be given over to the consideration of many 
questions of practical moment. Questions of 
labor and capital can be discussed if done 
discreetly. The service may be made into a 
forum in which both sides of debatable ques- 
tions are presented, and questions, as well as 
discussion, allowed from the floor. Pulpit 
editorials will arouse interest, as well as the 
answering of questions handed in by the people. 
A wide interest will be aroused in this way. 
Men will be attracted to the church who have 
feared it or scorned it. Information of the very 
best character is brought to the minds of the 
people and they are stimulated to think on 
public questions of social interest. 

It must not be understood that these services 
are irreligious or foreign to Christianity. They 
are very religious and Christian. They are not 
of the traditional type, that is true; but some 
splendid men and women cannot be reached in 
the traditional way who will be reached in this 



192 A WORKING PROGRAM 

way and interested to a very much greater 
extent. Often these people are far from being 
the Christians we hope they will be, but be- 
cause of this fact it requires the most elemental 
religious or Christian presentation to first per- 
suade them. They need the milk of the word 
before the meat. Then by a taste of the good 
things and a quickening of the conscience, and 
by breaking down the reserve or fear or 
prejudice which they have had for the church, 
they are often brought into the morning serv- 
ice where the more wholesome truths are pre- 
sented and where they develop in the way of 
life. 

Some methods which are used to attract 
people to church are deplorable. They cheapen 
religion and the church and ultimately do 
great harm. Nothing too strong can be said 
against such methods. But there is a legitimate 
service that is attractive and useful and of 
high Christian worth. It is not a compromise 
or a half-way bazaar service. It is not cheap 
or showy or catchy, or just a musicale. It is 
a service that actually dispenses the truth of 
God in relation to some of the most human 
and practical questions of the day, and reaches 
many of God's own children who otherwise 
will not be reached. Men do not shun and are 
not indifferent to religion. They often shun 



PROGRAM OF PREACHING 193 

the church and certain types of Christianity, 
but at heart men are religious. When Jesus 
wanted men he went out after them and made 
plain the gospel truths by all the illustrations 
and methods of natural common life at his 
command. In this greatest and saddest of all 
the days of the earth, the church must arouse 
itself to the demands and offer its message in a 
fresh, living way if it would not be superseded 
by some agency which will better interpret 
Christ and his gospel to men. Such a spirit 
must dominate our preaching program. 

The world war which is upon us has blighted 
many men's faith and has changed the faith 
of many more. The church must meet this 
new situation with its new demands. It is 
not going to be an easy task, but it is a chal- 
lenging one which ought to stir the heart of 
every disciple of Christ, certainly every minister. 
Our preaching must be more practical and 
more real; it must come home to men with a 
new authority — the authority of truth; it must 
touch every relationship, social as well as 
personal, in all life, and men must be led to 
yield to its spirit and authority. This will 
require hard thinking and painstaking care and 
devotion on the part of the leaders of the church. 
Its preaching must have new plan and purpose. 
Men must be led to think straight about 



194 A WORKING PROGRAM 

this war. This task will not end when the war 
is over, but long after men will confuse the 
issues and misjudge the motives. Christian 
men will be on the defensive at home and on 
the mission field. Especially will our enemies 
need a carefully laid program of teaching, and 
the men of all lands must guard against letting 
their judgment and mercy be overridden by 
passion and lust. This surely calls for a pro- 
gram of strong, fearless preaching, filled with 
the wisdom and the love of God. 



CHAPTER XI 
THE PROGRAM OF SERVICE 

This chapter on service may appropriately 
follow the preceding chapters on worship and 
preaching because service is the fruit of both. 
The word "service," as used in connection 
with the church, is a word which has caused 
division of opinion. To one mind the word 
"service" means the whole task of Christianity; 
the program of service is or should be the pro- 
gram of the church. To another mind the 
word means a substitute for the real business 
of Christianity. For to them Christianity is to 
change men's lives rather than to keep them 
busy. The first attitude is a rebellion against 
the idea that the essential work of the church is 
to get men saved from their sins, in the sense that 
they are insured for all eternity. The second 
attitude, in its best motive, springs from a feel- 
ing that in this rebellion — against the individual 
salvation idea — there is danger that men will be 
led to believe that they can substitute activities 
and charities for repentance and forgiveness. 

It will be seen that there is truth in both 
attitudes, and, as we so often have to do, so 
here, we must seek the truth from both con- 

195 



196 A WORKING PROGRAM 

ceptions. Salvation by repentance and grace 
is' an eternal truth for which no amount of 
service of any kind can be a substitute. Men 
do forget this at times and seem to think that 
acts of service, both individual and social, con- 
stitute the whole of the Christian life and pro- 
gram. They forget that all service must be 
the expression of personality, and that the first, 
if not the most important, task of the church 
is to build up this personality. It will be 
contended that this personality can be built 
up through service, and some will even hold 
that it can only be built up through service, 
but the lives that have contributed the most 
valuable and lasting types of service to the 
church and to the world have been those which 
have felt the absolute necessity of practicing 
a communion with God as a source of service. 
The expression of the individual life, like the 
leaves and flowers, must root back into some- 
thing for existence. The trolley soon comes 
to a halt when it loses touch with the power 
house. It may run for a while under its own 
momentum, but it will soon stop unless it is 
again connected with the source of power. 
Equally will a man lose the vitality which 
makes all service effective unless he keeps his 
life in vital touch with the Source of all life. 
This cannot be stated too strongly. 



PROGRAM OF SERVICE 197 

On the other hand, there can be no true 
salvation which is limited to the idea of per- 
sonal piety and selfish assurance of safety 
from eternal punishment. Moses, feeling the 
weight of the sins of his people until it became 
a burden he could no longer endure, cried out 
to God to save his people or blot his name 
from the book of life. Likewise Queen Esther 
so loved her people that she stood ready to 
risk her life and perish if necessary to save 
them. This is the true conception of what 
life is for, and the only true conception. Jesus 
gave expression to this principle when he de- 
clared that he who would save his life must 
lose it. Men must not only be good, but good 
for something and for somebody. To be saved 
does not mean to be safe, but to be a saving 
force in society. The healthy person is not 
the one who continually runs from disease, but 
the one who inspires and radiates health among 
men. The same is even more true with ref- 
erence to Christian health. Individuals are 
saved to save. Their personal salvation is 
not an end in itself, but a means to the salva- 
tion of other men. 

With this in mind, let us consider four lines 
of service in which the local church will en- 
gage. There will be all of that service which 
is necessary to the maintenance of the local 



198 A WORKING PROGRAM 

church; that service which the local church 
contributes to interests outside itself, such as 
missionary service; also the service individual 
Christians contribute to the community by 
living daily lives of faithfulness and honor in 
all their business and social relations; and 
that type of service which the church, by its 
preaching and teaching, by its ideals and 
practice, contributes toward the Christianizing 
of the social order. 

1. First consider that service which is nec- 
essary to the maintenance of the local church. 
All that has been said in previous chapters 
with reference to the work of organization, 
membership upkeep, financial labors, pastoral 
care, and especially the work of teaching and 
training the youth of the church constitutes a 
type of service in which the membership of the 
local church may be enlisted to the advantage 
not only of the local organization but also to 
those engaged in conducting the work. One 
of the problems of the local church is the prob- 
lem of its unemployed membership. With 
certain classes of the membership it is difficult 
to persuade them to give that personal interest 
and participation which is so necessary to them 
and to the church. They are ready to give 
money but not time and service. Because of 
this the church loses the ability of some of its 



PROGRAM OF SERVICE 199 

very best men and women. The church needs 
money. It cannot exist, of course, without it, 
but it must never be forgotten that the only 
investment which will ultimately save and 
upbuild the church and its work, or any other 
institution for that matter, is the investment 
of personality. It would be well if those 
uniting with the church were asked not simply 
whether they would support the church accord- 
ing to their ability, meaning according to 
their financial ability, but it would be well 
also to ask the question, "Will you support 
the church by your service as well as by your 
financial means?" Some churches have found 
it helpful to have new members sign pledge 
cards for service at the time of their uniting 
with the church, and other churches have made 
it a practice to take an "every -member canvass 
for service" during the year, as well as for 
financial support. These cards not only indi- 
cate the number of hours per week that people 
will serve the church, but they also indicate 
various lines of service which give people an 
opportunity to express their preference. 

2. The duty of the church, however, is larger 
than the mere matter of maintaining its own 
life. We are not called upon as a church to 
trump up service just for the sake of keeping 
people busy. There is a sense in which the 



200 A WORKING PROGRAM 

church has a duty here. Just as it is necessary 
to take the interned German crews out and 
give them exercise, so it is necessary to exercise 
the membership of the church, but the member- 
ship will not long remain interested in service 
which is just for the exercise of the individual 
and has no further importance. Some churches 
seem to feel that they have done their duty 
if they maintain their own existence. But the 
church is in the world not as an end but as a 
means to an end. It is in the world, "not to 
be ministered unto but to minister," and when 
the local church has come to the place where 
it must expend all of its activities and means 
upon its own existence, then certainly the time 
has come for it to cast in its lot with some 
other church, that together they may be a 
serving force in the community rather than a 
selfish force living off of the community. The 
sentiment which keeps churches in existence 
in communities long after they have lost their 
constituency and usefulness is nothing short 
of unchristian and should not be tolerated. 

This service outside the local field falls 
naturally into three divisions. These activities 
are very familiar and will need but slight 
mention. There are those activities outside 
the actual maintenance of the local church, but 
confined to the local community. Some peo- 



PROGRAM OF SERVICE 201 

pie's interests go no further than this field and 
can be very useful here. Then there are those 
interests beyond the local community, but con- 
fined to America. This work is commonly 
known as "home missions." There are also 
those whose interests are limited to this field. 
Frequently people are heard to say, "I have no 
interests in foreign missions because there is 
enough to do at home." This sometimes is 
an excuse for doing nothing, and yet there are 
those whose interests do not go beyond their 
own home land and who are a great service to 
the church in this field. Then there is that 
larger interest in humanity throughout the 
world which we call "foreign missions." It is 
unfortunate that there is such a sharp dis- 
tinction in the mind of the church between 
home and foreign missions. With the foreign 
element constituting so real a part in our home 
work and with the great world interest coming 
so near to all of us, it would seem that we 
should be able to accomplish more in the long 
run if this distinction were eliminated and all 
such work were made to come under the head 
of missions, with home and foreign depart- 
ments. This would have a decided advantage 
in the women's work of the local church, where 
there is often friction between these two organ- 
izations which is not wholesome. It would 



202 A WORKING PROGRAM 

seem also that one such board for the denom- 
ination would ultimately be better for the 
general cause, previous experience notwith- 
standing. At any rate, these three lines 
of missionary interests — the local community, 
America, and the world — constitute fields for 
service into which the local church must enter 
if it is to fulfill its mission. If it refuses such 
service and lives unto itself, it will surely die. 
The church that saves its life will lose it as 
certainly as the individual, while the church 
that loses its individuality in the great world 
causes will find itself in the larger life of the 
whole church and the kingdom of God. 

3. The great service, however, which the 
church must perform is not in creating special 
tasks for people to do, but in leading people to 
see that they are serving God, and Christ, 
and the church by carrying the will of God 
and the principles of Christ into all life's rela- 
tions and activities. Here is a business man, 
for example, who has established himself and 
a business institution in the community. He 
sells shoes, clothes, or perhaps groceries. He 
has an opportunity in this business not only 
of furnishing the needs of men in daily life, but 
of doing that larger and more important thing, 
building a business institution in the community 
that may be as great a testimony for righteous- 



PROGRAM OF SERVICE 203 

ness and for God as any library, school, or 
church. Through his example in efficiency, 
fairness, faithfulness, unselfishness, cooperation 
in the interests of the community and the 
good of all men, he, by his business and by his 
personal relation to it and to the community, 
is preaching a daily sermon for God and his 
truth. When men see him walking through 
the streets the thought comes to their minds, 
"There is an example of honest, faithful, un- 
selfish citizenship." They point him out to 
their sons as an example to follow. When 
people think of his business the same thought 
comes to their minds, perhaps unconsciously, 
but nevertheless really. This type of service 
which the church is exerting is sometimes 
overlooked, but there is no service which is 
so important as this. The best testimony of 
anything is when it works, and here is Chris- 
tianity in daily action. 

The same sort of an illustration could be 
given of a faithful woman in her home. She 
is a good housekeeper, a good mother, a good 
friend — the principles of Christ which she has 
learned through the church are being put 
into daily domestic life and into all of her 
social relations. She is not prudish, and may 
not speak of her Christianity much in public, 
but her Christianity becomes a daily testimony 



204* A WORKING PROGRAM 

because it is real and practical. The following 
words from Dr. L. Mason Clark, pastor of the 
First Presbyterian Church, of Brooklyn, are so 
pertinent that I want to quote at length: 

"Can we not get rid of the notion that the 
only kind of church Service' is that which aims 
immediately and directly to tie everybody up 
to some distinctively church activity? Is it 
not 'service' for a church member to live his 
daily life with patience and faith? Is it not 
'service' for our boys to get their lessons at 
school and for our girls to be modest and stu- 
dious and courteous? Is not a man who attends 
to his family and his business and his citizen- 
ship doing quite as much for God's church, 
and all the rest, as if he joined Kappa Sigma Pi 
or distributed cards to strangers at the church 
door? 

"The older I grow the more suspicious I be- 
come of this attempt to limit the idea of service 
to a few or many dinky things which enterprising 
clergymen think up in order to keep busy folk 
still busier. It looks to me as though the church 
were trying hard to keep itself alive instead of 
really living. 

"The fact of the matter is that many min- 
isters do not seem to consider that the church 
at work is the church doing its daily duties 
in society, whether at home or in business or 



PROGRAM OF SERVICE 205 

in politics. The church assembled is the church 
at worship. But when church folk are minding 
their own business and living decent lives and 
taking care of their children and being cheerful 
and patient and useful, that is the church at 
work. And all the Queens of Avalon and the 
Kappa Sigma Pi's do not amount to a hill of 
beans as expressions of church work in com- 
parison with the common, ordinary fidelities 
and courtesies of boys and girls who are learn- 
ing to live right, because they are trained in 
right homes. 

"Now, for a testimony. It will have to be 
very personal. The church I serve has two 
separated congregations, about three quarters 
of a mile apart. Two distinct plants. Two 
very different neighborhoods. A different staff 
of workers in each place, but only one organ- 
ization, one Session, one Board of Trustees. 
It is not a case of church and mission, but a 
case of church and branch. Nominally I am in 
charge of the two. Actually I have only the 
home church. At the branch they have a 
minister, a paid Sunday school superintendent 
(who also serves the home church school), a 
parish assistant, a trained nurse, a dental 
doctor and a regular physician, two kinder- 
gartners, a daily clinic, and all the clubs and 
arrangements for boys and girls and women 



206 A WORKING PROGRAM 

and men that human ingenuity can suggest; 
also a gymnasium and three paid workers to 
look after these special interests. The plant 
there is a regular beehive for industry. There 
is something going on every minute from early 
dawn till very near early dawn again. 

"On the other hand, this home church, which 
is more particularly my campus martius, is 
about the least organized of any church I ever 
heard of. We have morning and afternoon 
Sunday services, Sunday school, Wednesday 
evening meeting. Then the women have their 
Society for Missionary Work and Study, once 
a month; the men have a club once a month, 
six months in the year; the girls have a Guild, 
once a week during the winter; a troop of Boy 
Scouts meets in the church building once a 
week though the troop is in no sense an organ- 
ization of the church. Last of all the ladies 
have a large Aid Society. There is no Chris- 
tian Endeavor, laus Deo, no young people's 
prayer meeting, no women's prayer meeting, and, 
of course, no K. S. P. and friends of the late 
King Arthur. 

"Well, what is the result? The men and 
women of this church, almost totally, are 
identified with the various public interests — 
directors and trustees and managers of most 
of the charities and hospitals and Homes of 



PROGRAM OF SERVICE 207 

the town. You can hardly put your finger upon 
a man or woman or girl who is not specially 
interested in some of these institutions. I call 
that the church at work. The church at wor- 
ship is for them the place and source of their 
inspiration. And that is my idea of what a 
church is for. 

"I venture to put the matter in this bald 
way because to my mind the other side of the 
case has been overworked. All this talk about 
'recruits for service' is rather vague. When a 
person 'joins' this church, instead of giving him 
or her a list of organizations to become bur- 
dened with, I would rather give an inspiration 
so that that person may go straight back home 
or to the shop, or wherever it may be, and live 
a faithful and clean life. That seems to be 
the church at work and realizing its ideal." 

This opinion and testimony of Dr. Clark's 
well states and illustrates the most real and 
lasting service which the church contributes to 
the world, and should never be lost sight of 
in our thought of the church at work. 

4. The last phase of service which we will 
consider is very much akin to the preceding, 
but is broader in its scope. It has to do with 
the influence which the church is exerting and 
must exert upon the social order. Through its 



208 A WORKING PROGRAM 

preaching and teaching, through its missionary 
activities, through the personal life of its mem- 
bers, and by means of all its power, it has 
and must continue to serve the world by 
building the Christian society, the kingdom of 
God. The danger of being a nominal Christian 
and failing to exert an influence upon the social 
order is well stated by Dr. W. E. Orchard in 
his book entitled The Necessity of Christ. 
We do not agree entirely with his conclusion, 
but the tendency to which he points must 
ever be kept in mind. Dr. Orchard says: 
"Christian ideas get diluted in this process 
until they are indistinguishable from the gen- 
eral conception of all well-meaning people. 
Christianity comes to mean nothing definite, 
challenging, rallying. Persons are converted to 
Christianity; but they find themselves in a 
social order which they cannot change, and 
which soon they do not want to change, for 
they are involved and have invested in it too 
heavily. They may even become, while retain- 
ing a great devotional adherence to Christian- 
ity, the chief supporters and stoutest defenders 
of things as they are. They get into places 
of power, and we have hopes that they may 
redeem politics and Christianize the adminis- 
tration of the state; but they often degenerate 
into mere politicians, and in a crisis they will 



PROGRAM OF SERVICE 209 

direct their course by state necessities rather 
than by Christian principles. At present 
Christianity is losing heat faster than it can 
generate it, pouring its healing waters into a 
desert of sand which swallows them up and 
remains desert still." 

This need not be discussed at length, as men 
such as Dr. Walter Rauschenbusch, Dr. Harry 
Ward, and others, have well discussed it in 
all its bearings. It will be well simply to 
keep in mind the distinction and balance of 
emphasis which has been stated in the first 
part of this chapter. Man is an individual soul 
and a social being. As an individual soul he 
must look to God and the church for daily 
spiritual food. As a social being he must look 
to the church to use its forces to assist in 
setting up a social order which shall give to 
men a community in which they can develop 
the great family of God on earth. These two 
emphases must go side by side into the accom- 
plishment of this great task. 



CHAPTER XII 
A MODERN CHURCH PLANT 

And now a final word about the building in 
which this program shall be carried out. The 
length of this chapter will be no indication of 
the importance of this matter. We cannot 
give detailed plans, however, but simply sug- 
gest the principles which should determine the 
character of an efficient edifice for a church 
to-day. 

The plan of the building should follow the 
purpose and program of the church. The first 
question often asked is, "How shall the build- 
ing look?" This is the point of view of the 
architect, and this often leads church com- 
mittees astray. But in building a church edi- 
fice, while beauty and architectural symmetry 
must be considered, the first question should 
be, not How will it look? but What will it do? 
We should be pragmatists here and ask, first of 
all, "Will it work, and will it work in our place 
and for our needs?" If this question is kept 
strictly in mind, much is settled. 

When it comes to planning the details of the 
building, the church committee should be 
guided by the needs of the program to be worked 

210 



A MODERN CHURCH PLANT 211 

out. The first item of importance in this 
program, in our mind, is the religious educa- 
tional needs. And while this is so important, 
it is often sadly neglected. 

"Hundreds of thousands of dollars are ill 
spent annually on new Methodist church build- 
ings. We are in the midst of a remarkable 
building era in the life of the church. Many 
new churches are being erected each year, yet 
it is almost impossible to find church buildings 
really well equipped for Sunday school pur- 
poses. Most of the churches constructed dur- 
ing the past year, so far as provision for the 
Sunday school is concerned, were out of date 
before the day of dedication. 

"Of course, if one were to take at face value 
the glowing accounts supplied to the church 
papers, the situation might readily be believed 
to be very different. The average new church 
is described as modern in all its appointments. 
In nearly every case the detailed description of 
the building belies this characterization. It 
reveals that in addition to an auditorium the 
building has a single Sunday school assembly 
room, with few or many surrounding class- 
rooms. This type of building was modern a 
generation ago. To-day it is hopelessly out of 
date." 

This quotation from the Sunday School 



218 A WORKING PROGRAM 

Journal, January, 1917, is not overstated. The 
tendency, if the Sunday school interests are 
considered, is to build according to the old 
"Akron plan," which came into being as a re- 
sult of the idea of bringing the whole school in 
assembly under the direction of one superin- 
tendent. This plan has one large assembly 
room with individual classes opening off. 
Under our graded plan of to-day, however, 
the Sunday school is not often assembled as 
a whole, but meets in separate departments 
where separate and distinct exercises are con- 
ducted according to the ages of the pupils. 
This requires not only separate classrooms but 
separate department rooms for each depart- 
ment of the school, and is no more difficult to 
build and no more expensive when building a 
new church than the older plan. If a church 
is to be small, or if a church has been built 
on some other plan, then such features as 
movable partitions and folding doors can be 
provided at nominal cost. But the question 
of cost is not to be compared in considering the 
need and opportunity. The graded principle 
is here to stay because it is true and is the 
result of years of study and experience, so 
there is no need to fear radical change in 
undertaking such plans. Those who wish de- 
tailed plans will do well to consult the issue 



A MODERN CHURCH PLANT 213 

of the Journal to which reference has just 
been made. 

Another prominent feature of the church 
program, which needs to be well taken care of 
in the church building is the room for wor- 
ship. This has always been held to be the 
most important part of the building, and 
next to the Sunday school department it is. 
If a church is to be large enough, it is a splendid 
thing if this room can be kept exclusively for 
worship, that the atmosphere of the place may 
not be disturbed by the spirit of all sorts of 
other interests. This has been more fully 
stated in the chapter on "The Program of 
Worship." The matter of detail in building 
this room can and must be left to the taste 
of those who are to be served, but large use 
should be made of the experience of others, and 
many well-built and well-equipped church edi- 
fices should be visited. The architecture of 
this room should be warm and worshipful; 
there are many advantages to be considered 
in the placing of pulpit and organ and choir; 
and the comfort and interests of the children 
should not be overlooked. This room is not 
for adults alone, therefore some children's pews 
or seats should be included in the equipment. 
The little folks cannot be trained in the habit 
of attending the service of worship unless their 



214 A WORKING PROGRAM 

shape and size and general comfort is considered 
along with that of the adults. 

Another phase of the program to consider is 
that which has to do with the social and recre- 
ational life of the church. What a church 
should do in this way depends very largely 
upon its location in the city or town and upon 
the character of the people it serves. If there 
is no gymnasium or other such recreational 
facilities in reach of the young life of the com- 
munity, then a church should seriously con- 
sider something of this nature in its plans. On 
the other hand, if the city has such facilities 
and the youth of the church can be well or 
better cared for there (as often it can), then the 
church had better stick to that which has be- 
come more especially its task. Some churches, 
however, feel that they get more from their 
boys and girls and young people if they pro- 
vide these athletic and social opportunities in 
their own church rather than leave them to a 
Y. M. C. A. or a Y. W. C. A. At the First 
Presbyterian Church, Bridgeport, Connecticut, 
they have kept a record of the boys of their 
church who have been cared for in this way 
by the Y. M. C. A. and those who have been 
cared for in the Church Recreational Hall. 
(This building is in the same yard with the 
church but a separate building.) They have 



A MODERN CHURCH PLANT 215 

found that during a number of years their 
own boys who have been cared for in the 
church recreation hall are very much closer 
to the church and a greater number identified 
with its membership and active in its life than 
those of their own boys who have gone to the 
Y. M. C. A. This would seem to be reasonable, 
yet, after all, it depends on the relation between 
the Y. M. C. A. and the church and the spirit 
in which they work together. If the relation 
is close and the spirit is one of careful coopera- 
tion and the plants are near enough, it seems 
to be a duplication of work which the Y. M. 
C. A. can do better than for the church to try 
to run such work itself. It must be said that 
often there is not this cooperation, and some 
other course must be pursued. The question 
to settle is just this: Are the boys and girls 
and young men and women of the church 
receiving this part of their nurture as they 
should? If they are not, and there seems to 
be no immediate way of accomplishing this 
end, then it is the church's duty to make 
provision for the need. 

Besides a strictly recreational phase of life 
there is a social life to be considered. In 
smaller towns this is a real need which the 
church must meet, not only for the youth but 
for the adults of the church. Here we find a 



216 A WORKING PROGRAM 

legitimate use for a kitchen and dining room 
in the church plant. The dining room may 
very well be the same room as is ordinarily 
used for some other purpose, such as a large 
adult Bible class, or even a department of the 
Sunday school. It is to be hoped that our 
churches are fast approaching the time when 
kitchens and dining rooms in the church will 
be utilized for such purposes as these rather 
than for the financial ends to which they are 
now so often devoted. These social privileges 
and facilities should be extended to the children 
and young people of the church as well as to 
adults. Sometimes the Ladies' Aid Society 
will monopolize this part of the church life 
and restrict the use of dishes, tables, etc., to 
their own affairs. It is better if all these 
furnishings belong to the church rather than 
to any one society, and that they are cared 
for and put under the authority of a com- 
mittee of the church which has sympathy 
with the whole church life. 

Church parlors are quite necessary for social 
and business meetings of the church and com- 
munity, and in downtown churches the church 
can serve a distinct need among girls who are 
living in rooming houses, by providing parlors 
where they can bring their friends. The church 
may in this way become a home to the home- 



A MODERN CHURCH PLANT 217 

less, and save many lives that might go astray 
from sheer force of circumstances. 

A part of the church life that must be con- 
sidered in a plant of any size is the business 
end of the institution. A church office, with 
good office furniture, is essential these days. 
A Sunday school or week-day church school 
that properly cares for its pupils will need a 
staff of secretaries who will need office room. 
Committees and boards must have rooms in 
which to meet, although these can often be 
rooms which are for other purposes as well. 
We certainly should not waste rooms for these 
or any other purposes where careful plans and 
management will make efficiency possible at 
less cost. But the business of the church should 
be done in a businesslike way, and if it is to 
be so conducted, proper facilities will be nec- 
essary. Such provision always will pay for 
itself. 

Without going into the matter at length 
it should be stated that where the community 
warrants the expenditure, a separate building 
such as a Church House or Parish House is 
the best solution for all church activities out- 
side of the usual preaching and worshiping 
services. This will be found to settle a great 
many questions upon which members of con- 
gregations often differ widely in opinion. 



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